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[Illustration: THE WARRIOR'S LAST RIDE (See the Battle of Deerfield,
Vol. 1., p. 205) _Painted by Frederic Remington_]

THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES FROM 1492 TO 1910

By JULIAN HAWTHORNE




VOLUME I

From Discovery Of America October 12, 1492

To

Battle Of Lexington April 19, 1775




CONTENTS OF VOLUME ONE

INTRODUCTION BEFORE DAWN

I. COLUMBUS, RALEIGH, AND SMITH

II. THE FREIGHT OF THE "MAYFLOWER"

III. THE SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS

IV. FROM HUDSON TO STUYVESANT

V. LIBERTY, SLAVERY, AND TYRANNY

VI. CATHOLIC, PHILOSOPHER, AND REBEL

VII. QUAKER, YANKEE, AND KING

VIII. THE STUARTS AND THE CHARTER

IX. THE NEW LEAF, AND THE BLOT ON IT

X. FIFTY YEARS OF FOOLS AND HEROES

XI. QUEM JUPITER VULT PERDERE

XII. THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM AND THE STAMP ACT

XIII. THE PASSING OF THE RUBICON

XIV. THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD




INTRODUCTION


When we speak of History, we may mean either one of several things. A
savage will make picture-marks on a stone or a bone or a bit of wood;
they serve to recall to him and his companions certain events which
appeared remarkable or important for one or another reason; there was
an earthquake, or a battle, or a famine, or an invasion: the chronicler
himself, or some fellow-tribesman of his, may have performed some
notable exploit. The impulse to make a record of it was natural:
posterity might thereby be informed, after the chronicler himself had
passed away, concerning the perils, the valor, the strange experiences
of their ancestors. Such records were uniformly brief, and no attempt
was made to connect one with another, or to interpret them. We find
such fragmentary histories among the remains of our own aborigines; and
the inscriptions of Egypt and Mesopotamia are the same in character and
intention, though more elaborate. Warlike kings thus endeavored, from
motives of pride, to perpetuate the memory of their achievements. At
the time when they were inscribed upon the rock, or the walls of the
tombs, or the pedestals of the statues, they had no further value than
this. But after the lapse of many ages, they acquire a new value, far
greater than the original one, and not contemplated by the scribes.
They assume their proper place in the long story of mankind, and
indicate, each in its degree, the manner and direction of the processes
by which man has become what he is, from what he was. Thereby there is
breathed into the dead fact the breath of life; it rises from its tomb
of centuries, and does its appointed work in the mighty organism of
humanity.

In a more complex state of society, a class of persons comes into being
who are neither protagonists, nor slaves, but observers; and they
meditate on events, and seek to fathom their meaning. If the observer
be imaginative, the picturesque side of things appeals to him; he
dissolves the facts, and recreates them to suit his conceptions of
beauty and harmony; and we have poetry and legend. Another type of mind
will give us real histories, like those of Herodotus, Thucydides,
Tacitus and Livy, which are still a model in their kind. These great
writers took a broad point of view; they saw the end from the beginning
of their narrative; they assigned to their facts their relative place
and importance, and merged them in a pervading atmosphere of opinion,
based upon the organic relation of cause and effect. Studying their
works, we are enabled to discern the tendencies and developments of a
race, and to note the effects of civilization, character, vice, virtue,
and of that sum of them all which we term fate.

During what are called the Dark Ages of Europe, history fell into the
hands of that part of the population which alone was conversant with
letters--the priestly class; and the annals they have left to us have
none of the value which belongs to the productions of classical
antiquity. They were again mere records; or they were mystical or
fanciful tales of saints and heroes, composed or distorted for the
glorification of the church, and the strengthening of the influence of
the priests over the people. But these also, in after times, took on a
value which they had not originally possessed, and become to the later
student a precious chapter of the history of mankind.

Meanwhile, emerging august from the shadows of antiquity, we have that
great body of literature of which our own Bible is the highest type,
which purports to present the story of the dealings of the Creator with
His creatures. These wonderful books appear to have been composed in a
style, and on a principle, the secret of which has been lost. The facts
which they relate, often seemingly trivial and disconnected, are really
but a material veil, or symbol, concealing a spiritual body of truth,
which is neither trivial nor disconnected, but an organized, orderly
and catholic revelation of the nature of man, of the processes of his
spiritual regeneration, of his final reconciliation with the Divine.
The time will perhaps come when some inspired man or men will be
enabled to handle our modern history with the same esoteric insight
which informed the Hebrew scribes, when they used the annals of the
obscure tribe to which they belonged as a cover under which to present
the relations of God with all the human race, past and to come.

       *       *       *       *       *

Modern history tends more and more to become philosophic: to be an
argument and an interpretation, rather than a bald statement of facts.
The facts contained in our best histories bear much the same relation
to the history itself, that the flesh and bones of the body bear to the
person who lives in and by them. The flesh and bones, or the facts,
have to exist; but the only excuse for their existence is, that the
person may have being, or that the history may trace a spiritual growth
or decadence. There was perhaps a time when the historian found a
difficulty in collecting facts enough to serve as a firm foundation for
his edifice of comment and deduction; but nowadays, his embarrassment
is rather in the line of making a judicious selection from the enormous
mass of facts which research and the facilities of civilization have
placed at his disposal. Not only is every contemporary event recorded
instantly in the newspapers and elsewhere; but new light is being
constantly thrown upon the past, even upon the remotest confines
thereof. Some of the facts thus brought before us are original and
vital; others are mere echoes, repetitions, and unimportant variations.

But the historian, if he wishes his work to last, must build as does
the Muse in Emerson's verse, with

         .... "Rafters of immortal pine,
  Cedar incorruptible, worthy her design."

Or he may be sure that the historian who comes after him will sift the
wheat from his chaff, and leave him no better reputation than that of
the quarry from which the marble of the statue comes. He must tell a
consecutive story, but must eschew all redundancy, furnish no more
supports for his bridge than its stability requires, prune his tree so
severely that it shall bear none but good fruit, forbear to freight the
memory of his reader with a cargo so unwieldy as to sink it. On the
other hand, of course, he must beware of being too terse; man cannot
live by bread alone, and the reader of histories needs to be told the
Why as well as the What. But the historical field is so wide that one
man, in his one lifetime, can hardly hope by independent and original
investigation both to collect all the data from which to build his
structure, and so to select his timbers that only the indispensable
ones shall be employed. In reality, we find one historian of a given
subject or period succeeding another, and refining upon his methods and
treatment. With each successive attempt the outlook becomes clearer and
more comprehensive, and the meaning of the whole more pronounced. The
spirit, for the sake of which the body exists, more and more dominates
its material basis, until at last the latter practically vanishes "in
the light of its meaning sublime." This is the apotheosis of history,
which of course has not yet been attained, and probably can never be
more than approximated.

       *       *       *       *       *

The present work is a very modest contribution toward the desired
result. It makes few or no pretensions to original research. There are
many histories of the United States and the fundamental facts thereof
are known. But it remains for the student to endeavor to solve and
declare the meaning of the familiar events; to state his view of their
source and their ultimate issue. In these volumes, I have taken the
view that the American nation is the embodiment and vehicle of a Divine
purpose to emancipate and enlighten the human race. Man is entering
upon a new career of spiritual freedom: he is to enjoy a hitherto
unprecedented condition of political, social and moral liberty--as
distinguished from license, which in truth is slavery. The stage for
this grand evolution was fixed in the Western Continent, and the
pioneers who went thither were inspired with the desire to escape from
the thralldom of the past, and to nourish their souls with that pure
and exquisite freedom which can afford to ignore the ease of the body,
and all temporal luxuries, for the sake of that elixir of immortality.
This, according to my thinking, is the innermost core of the American
Idea; if you go deep enough into surface manifestations, you will find
it. It is what differentiates Americans from all other peoples; it is
what makes Americans out of emigrants; it is what draws the masses of
Europe hither, and makes their rulers fear and hate us. It may often,
and uniformly, happen that any given individual is unconscious of the
Spirit that moves within him; for it is the way of that Spirit to
subordinate its manifestations to its ends, knowing the frailty of
humanity. But it is there, and its gradual and cumulative results are
seen in the retrospect, and it may perhaps be divined as to the outline
of some of its future developments.

Some sort of recognition of the American Idea, and of the American
destiny, affords the only proper ground for American patriotism. We
talk of the size of our country, of its wealth and prosperity, of its
physical power, of its enlightenment; but if these things be all that
we have to be proud of, we have little. They are in truth but outward
signs of a far more precious possession within. We are the pioneers of
the new Day, or we are nothing worth talking about. We are at the
threshold of our career. Our record thus far is full of faults, and
presents not a few deformities, due to our human frailties and
limitations; but our general direction has been onward and upward. At
the moment when this book is finished, we seem to be entering upon a
fresh phase of our journey, and a vast horizon opens around us. It was
inevitable that America should not be confined to any special area on
the map of the world; it is of little importance that we fill our own
continent with men and riches. We are to teach men in all parts of the
world what freedom is, and thereby institute other Americas in the very
strongholds of oppression. In order to accomplish this, Americans will
be drawn forth and will obtain foothold in remote regions, there to
disseminate their genius and inculcate their aims. In Europe and Asia
are wars and rumors of wars; but there seems no reason why the true
revolution, which Americanism involves, should not be a peaceful and
quiet one. Our real enemies may be set in high places, but they are
very few, and their power depends wholly on those myriads who are at
heart our allies. If we can assure the latter of our good faith and
disinterestedness, the battle is won without fighting. Indeed, the day
for Mohammedan conquests is gone by, and any such conquest would be far
worse than futile.

These are theories and speculations, and so far as they enter into my
book, they do so as atmosphere and aim only; they are not permitted to
mold the character of the narrative, so that it may illustrate a
foregone conclusion. I have related the historical story as simply and
directly as I could, making use of the best established authorities.
Here and there I have called attention to what seemed to me the
significance of events; but any one is at liberty to interpret them
otherwise if he will. After all the best use of a history is probably
to stimulate readers to think for themselves about the events
portrayed; and if I have succeeded in doing that, I shall be satisfied.
The history of the United States does mean something: what is it? Are
we a decadent fruit that is rotten before it is ripe? or are we the bud
of the mightiest tree of time? The materials for forming your judgment
are here; form it according as your faith and hope may dictate.

JULIAN HAWTHORNE.




BEFORE DAWN


When, four centuries ago, adventurers from the Old World first landed
on the southern shores of the Western Continent, and pushed their way
into the depths of the primeval forest, they found growing in its
shadowy fastnesses a mighty plant, with vast leaves radiating upward
from the mould, and tipped with formidable thorns. Its aspect was
unfriendly; it added nothing to the beauty of the wilderness, and it
made advance more difficult. But from the midst of some of them uprose
a tall stem, rivaling in height the trees themselves, and crowned with
a glorious canopy of golden blossoms. The flower of the forbidding
plant was the splendor of the forest.

It was the Agave, or American Aloe, sometimes called the Century Plant,
because it blooms but once in a lifetime. It is of the family of the
lilies; but no other lily rivals its lofty magnificence. From the gloom
of the untrodden places it sends its shaft skyward into the sunshine;
it is an elemental growth: its simplicity equals its beauty. But until
the flower blooms, after its ages of preparation, the plant seems to
have no meaning, proportion, or comeliness; only when those golden
petals have unfolded upon the summit of their stately eminence do we
comprehend the symmetry and significance that had so long waited to
avouch themselves.

This Lily of the Ages, native to American soil, may fittingly stand as
the symbol of the great Western Republic which, after so many thousand
years of spiritual vicissitude and political experiment, rises
heavenward out of the wilderness of time, and reveals its golden
promise to those who have lost their way in the dark forest of error
and oppression. It was long withheld, but it came at last, and about it
center the best hopes of mankind. These United States--this America of
ours, as we love to call it--is unlike any other nation that has
preceded or is contemporary with it. It is the conscious incarnation of
a sublime idea--the conception of civil and religious liberty. It is a
spirit first, and a body afterward; thus following the true law of
immortal growth. It is the visible consummation of human history, and
commands the fealty of all noble minds in every corner of the earth, as
well as within its own boundaries. There are Americans in all
countries; but America is their home.

The seed is hidden in the soil; the germ is shut within the darkness of
the womb; the preparation for all birth is obscure. For more than a
century after the discovery of Columbus, no one divined the true
significance and destiny of the nation-that-was-to-be. Years passed
before it was understood even that the coast of the New World was
anything more than the western boundaries of the Asiatic continent;
Columbus never wavered from this conviction; the Cabots fancied that
our Atlantic shores were those of China; and though Balboa, in 1513,
waded waist-deep into the Pacific off Darien, and claimed it for Spain,
yet the massive immensity of America was not suspected. There was not
space for it on the globe as then plotted by geographers; it must be a
string of islands, or at best but an attenuated outlying bulwark of the
East. News spread slowly in those days; Vasco da Gama had reached India
round the Cape of Good Hope before Balboa's exploit; Columbus, on his
third voyage, had touched the mainland of South America, and young
Sebastian Cabot, sailing from Bristol under the English flag, had
driven his prow against Labrador ice in his effort to force a northwest
passage; and still the truth was not fully realized. And when, a
century later, the English colonies were assigned their boundaries,
these were defined north, south and east, but to the west they extended
without limit. Panama was but thirty miles across, and no one imagined
that three thousand miles of solid land stretched between the
Chesapeake and the Bay of San Francisco. Then, as now, orthodoxy fought
against the heresy that there could be anything that was not as narrow
as itself.

And this physical denial or belittlement of the American continent had
its mental complement in the failure to comprehend the destiny of the
people which was to inhabit it. Spain thought only of material and
theological aggrandizements: of getting gold, and converting heathen,
to her own temporal and spiritual glory; and she was as ready to shed
innocent blood in the latter cause as in the former. England, without
her rival's religious bigotry, was as intent upon winning wealth
through territorial and commercial usurpations. Though not a few of the
actual discoverers and explorers were generous, magnanimous and kindly
men, having in view an honorable renown, based on opening new fields of
life and prosperity to future ages, yet the monarchs and the trading
Companies that stood behind them exhibited an unvarying selfishness and
greed. The new world was to them a field for plunder only. Each aimed
to own it all, and to monopolize its produce. The priestly missionaries
of the Roman Catholic faith did indeed pursue their ends with a
self-sacrifice and courage which deserve all praise; they devoted
themselves at the risk and often at the cost of their lives to the
enterprise of winning souls, as they believed, to Christ. But the
Church dignitaries who sent forth these soldiers of religion sought
through them only to increase the credit of their organization; they
contemplated but the enlargement of their power. The thought of
establishing in the wilderness a place where men might rule themselves
in freedom entered not into their calculations. The spirit of the old
order survived the birth of the spirit of the new.

But the conflict thus provoked was necessary to the evolution which
Providence was preparing. The soul grows strong through hardship; truth
conquers by struggling against opposition. It is by resistance, at
first instinctive, against restraint that the infant attains
self-consciousness. The first settlers who came across the ocean were
animated solely by the desire to escape from oppression in their native
land; they had as yet no purpose to set up an independent empire. But,
as the breath of the forest and the prairie entered into their lungs,
and the untrammeled spaciousness of the virgin continent unshackled
their minds, they began to resent, though at first timidly, the
arrogant pretension to rule them across the waves. Their environment
gave them courage, made them hardy and self-dependent, enlightened
their intelligence, weaned them from vain traditions, revealed to them
the truth that man's birthright is liberty. And gradually, as the reins
of tyranny were drawn tighter, these pioneers of the New Day were
wrought up to the pitch of throwing off all allegiance, and setting
their lives upon the cast. The idea of political freedom is commonplace
now; but to conceive it for the first time required a mighty effort,
and it could have been accomplished nowhere else than in a vast and
untrodden land. The Declaration of Independence, nearly three centuries
after Columbus's discovery of America, showed the hitherto blind and
sordid world what America was discovered for. Individual men of genius
had surmised it many years before; but their hope of forecast had been
deemed but an idle vision until in a moment, as it were, the reality
was born.

It was essential, however, to the final success of the great revolt,
that the men who brought it to pass should be the best of a chosen
race. And this requisite also was secured by conflict. It was the
inveterate persuasion of many generations that America was the land of
gold. Tales told by the Indians stimulated the imagination and the
cupidity of the first adventurers; legends of El Dorado kindled the
horizons that fled before them as they advanced. Somewhere beyond those
savage mountains, amid these pathless forests, was a noble city built
and paved with gold. Somewhere flowed a stately river whose waters
swept between golden margins, over sands of gold. In some remote region
dwelt a barbarian monarch to whom gold and precious stones were as the
dross of the wayside. These stories were the offspring of the legends
of the alchemists of the Dark Ages, who had professed to make gold in
their crucibles; it was as good to pick up gold in armfuls on the earth
as to manufacture it in the laboratory. The actual discovery of
treasure in Mexico and Peru only whetted the inexhaustible appetite of
the adventurers; they toiled through swamps, they cut their way through
woods, they scaled precipices, they fought savages, they starved and
died; and their eyes, glazing in death, still sought the gleam of the
precious metal. Worse than death, to them, would have been the
revelation that their belief was baseless. The thirst for wealth is not
accounted noble; yet there seems to have been something not ignoble in
this romantic quest for illimitable gold. There is a magic in the mere
idea of the yellow metal, apart from such practical or luxurious uses
as it may subserve; it stood for power and splendor--whatever good the
men of that age were prone to appreciate. Howbeit, the strongest and
bravest of all lands were drawn together in the search; and inevitably
they met and clashed. Foremost among the antagonists were Spain and
England. The ambition of Spain was measureless; she desired not only
the mastery of America and its riches, but the empire of the world, the
leadership in commerce, and the ownership of the very gates of Heaven.
England sought land and trade; she was practical and unromantic, but
strong and daring; and in her people, unlike the Spanish, were
implanted the seeds of human freedom. She had not as yet the prestige
of Spain; but men like Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh went far to
win it; moreover, the star of Spain had already begun to wane, while
that of England was waxing. Whenever, therefore, the strength of the
two rivals was fairly pitted, England had the better of the encounter.
Spain might dominate, for a while, the southern regions of the
continent; and her priests might thread the western wildernesses, and
build white-walled missions there; but to England should belong the
Atlantic coast from Labrador to Florida: the most readily accessible
from Europe, and the best adapted to bring forth that wealth for which
gold must be given in exchange. The struggle, as between the Spanish
and the English, was temporarily suspended, and it was with France that
the latter now found themselves confronted. The French had entered
America by way of the St. Lawrence, and down the Mississippi, in
expectation, like the others, of finding a passage through to India;
they had planted colonies and conciliated the Indians, and were
destined to give England much more trouble than her former foe had
done. They, like the English, wished to live in the new world; Spain's
chief desire was to plunder it and take the booty home with her. In the
sequel, England was victorious; and thus approved her right to be the
nucleus of the Race of the Future. Finally, it was to be her fate to
fight that Race itself, and to be defeated by it; and thus, as the
chosen from the chosen, the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies were
to begin their career.

The birth of America must therefore be dated, not from the discovery of
the land, but from the culmination in revolt of the English Colonies.
All that preceded this was as the early and ambiguous processes of
nature in bringing forth the plant from the seed. Nature knows her
work, and its result; but the onlooker sees the result only. The
Creator of man knew of what a child America was to be the mother: but
the world, intent upon its selfish concerns, recognized it only when
the consummation had been reached. And even now she eyes us askance,
and mutters doubts as to our endurance and our legitimacy. But America
is Europe's best and only friend, and her political pattern must sooner
or later, and more or less exactly, be followed by all peoples.
Democracy, however unwelcome in its first and outward aspect it may
appear, is the logical issue of human experiments in government; it is
susceptible of much abuse and open to many corruptions; but these
cannot penetrate far below the surface; they are external and obvious,
not vital and secret; because at heart the voice of democracy is the
voice of God. It may be silent for long, so that some will disbelieve
or despair, and say in their haste that democracy is a fraud or a
failure. But at last its tones will be heard, and its word will be
irresistible and immortal: the word of the Lord, uttering itself
through the mouth of His creatures.

The preliminary episodes and skirmishings, therefore, which went before
the spiritual self-consciousness of America, will be treated here in
outline only; only such events and persons as were the sources of
subsequent important conditions will be drawn in light and shadow. This
period of adventure and exploration is, it is true, rich in picturesque
characters and romantic incident, but they have little organic relation
to the history of the true America--which is the tracing of the
development and embodiment of an abstract idea. They belong to Europe,
whose life was present in them, though the men acted and the incidents
occurred in a strange environment. They are attractive subjects of
study in themselves, but have small pertinence to the present argument.
Our aim will be to maintain an organic coherency.

Still less can we linger in that impressive darkness before dawn which
prevailed upon the continent before the advent of Columbus. The mystery
which shrouds the origin and annals of the races which inhabited
America previous to the European invasion has been assiduously
investigated, but never dispelled. At first it was taken for granted
that the "Indians," as the red men were ignorantly called, were the
aboriginal denizens of the country. But the mounds, ruined cities,
pottery and other remains since found in all parts of the land,
concerning which the Indians could furnish no information, and which
showed a state of civilization far in advance of theirs, were proof
that a great people had existed here in the remote past, who had
flourished and disappeared without leaving any trace whereby they could
be accounted for or identified. They are an enigma compared with which
the archeological problems of the Old World are an open book. We can
form no conception of the conditions under which they lived, of their
personal characteristics, of their language, habits, or religion. We
cannot determine whether these forerunners of the Indians were one
people in several stages of development, or several peoples in
simultaneous occupation of the land. We can establish no trustworthy
connection between them and any Asiatic races, and yet we are reluctant
to believe them isolated from the rest of mankind. If they had dwelt
here from their creation, why had they not progressed further in
civilization?--and if they emigrated hither from another continent, why
do their remains not indicate their source? By what agency did they
perish, and when? The more keenly we strive to penetrate their mystery,
the more perplexing does it appear; the further we investigate them,
the more alien from anything we are or have known do they seem. Elusive
as mist, and questionable as night, they form a suggestive background
on which the vivid and energetic drama of our novel civilization stands
out in sharp relief.

Scarcely less mysterious--though living among us still--are the red men
whom we found here. They had no written languages or history; their
knowledge of their own past was confined to vague and fanciful
traditions. They were few in numbers, barbarous in condition, untamable
in nature; they built no cities and practiced no industries: their
women planted maize and performed all menial labors; their men hunted
and fought. Before we came, they fought one another; our coming did not
unite them against a common enemy; it only gave each of them one enemy
the more. After an intercourse of four hundred years, we know as little
of them as we did at first; we have neither educated, absorbed nor
exterminated them. The fashion of their faces, and some other
indications, seem to point to a northern Asiatic ancestry; but they
cannot tell us even so much as we can guess. There have been among
them, now and again, men of commanding abilities in war and
negotiation; but their influence upon their people has not lasted
beyond their own lives. Amid the roar and fever of these latter ages,
they stand silent, useless, and apathetic. They belong to our history
only in so far as their savage and treacherous hostility contributed to
harden the fortitude of our earlier settlers, and to weld them into a
united people.

Posterity may resolve these obscurities; meanwhile they remain in
picturesque contrast to the merciless publicity of our own life, and
the scientific annihilation of time and distance. They are as the dark
and amorphous loam in which has taken root the Flower of the Ages. If
extremes must meet, it was fitting that the least and the most highly
developed examples of mankind should dwell side by side, at the close
of the nineteenth century, in a land to which neither is native: that
Europe, the child of Asia, should meet its prehistoric parent here, and
work out its destiny before her uncomprehending eyes. The world is an
inn of strange meetings; and this encounter is perhaps the strangest of
all.

The most dangerous enemy of America has been--not Spain, France,
England, or any other nation in arms, but--our own material prosperity.
The lessons of adversity we took to heart, and they brought forth
wholesome fruit, purifying our blood and toughening our muscles. So
long as the Spirit of Liberty was threatened from without, she was safe
and triumphant. But when her foes abroad had ceased to harry her, a foe
far more insidious began to plot against her in her own house. The
tireless energy and ingenuity which are our most salient
characteristics, and which had rendered us formidable and successful on
sea and land, were turned by peace into productive channels. The
enormous natural resources of the continent began to receive
development; men who under former conditions would have been admirals
and generals, now became leaders in commerce, manufactures and finance;
they made great fortunes, and set up standards of emulation other than
patriotism and public spirit. Like the old Spanish and English
adventurers, they sought for gold, and held all other things secondary
to that. An anomalous oligarchy sprang into existence, holding no
ostensible political or social sway, yet influential in both directions
by virtue of the power of money. Money can be possessed by the evil as
well as by the good, and it can be used to tempt the good to condone
evil. The exalted maxim of human equality was interpreted to mean that
all Americans could be rich; and the spectacle was presented of a
mighty and generous nation fighting one another for mere material
wealth. Inevitably, the lower and baser elements of the population came
to the surface and seemed to rule; the ordinary citizen, on whom the
welfare of the State depends, allowed his private business interest to
wean him from the conduct of public affairs, which thereby fell into
the hands of professional politicians, who handled them for their
personal gain instead of for the common weal. We forgot that pregnant
saying, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," and suffered
ourselves to be persuaded that because our written Constitution was a
wise and patriotic document, we were forever safe even from the effects
of our own selfishness and infidelity. As some men are more skillful
and persistent manipulators of money than others, it happened that the
capital of the country became massed in one place and was lacking in
another; the numbers of the poor, and of paupers, increased; and the
rich were able to control their political action and sap their
self-respect by dominating the employment market. "Do my bidding, or
starve," is a cogent argument; it should never be in the power of any
man to offer it; but it was heard over the length and breadth of free
America. The efforts of laboring men, by organization, to check the
power of capitalists, was met by the latter with organizations of their
own, which, in the form of vast "trusts" and otherwise, deprived small
manufacturers and traders of the power of independent self-support.
Strikes and lockouts were the natural outcome of such a situation; and
the sinister prospect loomed upon us of labor and capital arrayed
against each other in avowed hostility.

Danger from this cause, however, is more apparent than actual. The
remedy, in the last resort, is always in ourselves. Laws as to land and
contracts may be modified, but the true cure for all such injuries and
inequalities is to cease to regard the amassing of "fortunes" as the
most desirable end in life. The land is capable of supporting in
comfort far more than its present population; ignorance or selfish
disregard of the true principles of economy have made it seem
otherwise. The proper state of every man is that of a producer; the
craving of individuals to own what they have not fairly earned and
cannot usefully administer, is vain and disorderly. Men will always be
born who have the genius of management; and others who require to have
their energies directed; some can profitably control resources which to
others would be a mischievous burden. But this truth does not involve
any extravagant discrepancy in the private means and establishments of
one or the other; each should have as much as his needs, intelligence
and taste legitimately warrant, and no more. Such matters will
gradually adjust themselves, once the broad underlying principle has
been accepted. Meanwhile we may remember that national health is not
always synonymous with peace. It was the warning of our Lord--"I am not
come to bring peace? but a sword." The war which is waged with powder
and ball is often less contrary to true peace than the war which exists
while all the outward semblances of peace are maintained. We must not
be misled by names. America is perhaps too prone to regard herself in a
passive light, as the refuge merely of the oppressed and needy; but she
has an active mission too. She stands for so much that is contrary to
the ideas that have hitherto ruled the world that she can hardly hope
to avoid the hostility, and possibly the attacks, of the
representatives of the old order. These, she must be able and ready to
repel. We have freely shed our blood for our own freedom; and we should
not forget that, though charity begins at home, it need not end there.
We should not interpret too strictly the maxims which admonish us to
mind our own housekeeping, and to avoid entanglements with the quarrels
or troubles of our neighbors. We should not say to the tide of our
liberties, Thus far shalt thou go, and no further. America is not a
geographical expression, and arbitrary geographical boundaries should
not be permitted to limit the area which her principles control. We,
who seek to bind the other nations to ourselves by ties of commerce,
should recognize the obligations of other ties, whose value cannot be
expressed in money.

America wears her faults upon her forehead, not in her heart; her
history is just beginning; she herself dreams not yet what her ultimate
destiny will be. But so far as her brief past may serve as a key
wherewith to open the future? a study of it will not be idle.



CHAPTER FIRST

COLUMBUS, RALEIGH AND SMITH


The records will have it that America was discovered in consequence of
the desire of Europe to profit by the commerce of Cathay, which had
hitherto reached them only by the long and expensive process of a
journey due west. One caravan had passed on the spices and other
valuables to another, until they reached the Mediterranean. It was
asked whether the trip could not be more quickly and cheaply made by
sea. Assuming, as was generally done, that the earth was flat, why
might not a man sail round the southern extremity of Africa, and up the
other side to the Orient? It was true that the extremity of Africa
might extend to the Southern ice, in which case this plan would not
serve; but the attempt might be worth making. This was the view of
Henry of Portugal, a scientific and ingenious prince, whose life
covered the first sixty years of the Fifteenth Century. And Portuguese
mariners did accordingly sail their little ships far down the Atlantic
coast of the Dark Continent; but they did not venture quite far enough
until long after good Prince Henry was dead, and Columbus had (in his
own belief) pioneered a shorter way.

Columbus was a theorist and a visionary. Many men who have been able to
show much more plausible grounds for their theories than he could for
his have died the laughing-stock of the world. Columbus was a
laughing-stock for nearly twenty years; but though the special
application of his theory was absurdly wrong, yet in principle it
chanced to be right; and he was so fortunate as to be empowered to
bring it to a practical demonstration. His notion was that the earth
was not flat, but round. Therefore the quickest route to the extreme
East must be in exactly the opposite direction; the globe, he
estimated, could not be much over fifteen thousand miles in girth;
Cathay, by the land route, was twelve thousand miles or so east of
Europe; consequently the distance west could not be more than three
thousand. This could be sailed over in a month or two, and the saving
in time and trouble would be immense.--Thus did he argue--shoving the
Atlantic into the Pacific Ocean, subtracting six or seven thousand
miles from their united breadth, and obliterating entirely that western
continent which he was fated to discover, though he was never to
suspect its existence.

The heresy that the earth was a sphere had long been in existence;
Aristotle being the earliest source to which it could be traced.
Sensible people did not countenance it then, any more than they accept
to-day the conjecture that other planets than this may be inhabited.
They demonstrated its improbability on historical and religious
grounds, and also made the point that, supposing it were round, and
that Columbus were to sail down the under side of it, he would never be
able to climb back again. But the Genoese was a man who became more
firmly wedded to his opinion in proportion as it met with ridicule and
opposition; proofs he had none of the truth of his pet idea; but he
clung to it with a doggedness which must greatly have exasperated his
interlocutors. By dint of sheer persistence, he almost persuaded some
men that there might be something in his project; but he never brought
any of them to the pitch of risking money on it. It was only upon a
woman that he was finally able to prevail; and doubtless the
intelligence of Isabella of Castile was less concerned in the affair
than was her feminine imagination. Had she known more, she would have
done less. But so, for that matter, would Columbus.

Almost as little is known of the personal character of this man as of
Shakespeare's; and the portraits of him, though much more numerous than
those of the poet, are even less compatible with one another. The
estimates and conjectures of historians also differ; some describe a
pious hero and martyr, others a dissolute adventurer and charlatan. We
are constrained, in the end, to construct his effigy from our own best
interpretation of the things he did. Some little learning he had; just
enough, probably, to disturb the balance of his judgment. He could read
Latin and make maps, and he had ample experience of practical
navigation. His life as a mariner got him the habit of meditation, and
this favored the espousal of theories, which, upon occasion, he could
expound with volubility or defend with passion, as his Italian
temperament prompted. His imagination was portentous, and the Fifteenth
Century was hospitable to this faculty; there was nothing--except plain
but unknown facts--too marvelous to be believed; and that Columbus was
even more credulous than his contemporaries is proved by the evidence
that even facts were not exempt from his entertainment. An ordinary
appetite for the marvelous could swallow stories of chimeras dire, and
men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders; but nothing short of
the profligate capacity of a Columbus could digest such a proposition
as that the earth was round and could be circumnavigated. The type of
half-educated fanatics to which he belonged has always been common;
there is nothing exceptional or remarkable in this fanatic except the
fortune which finally attended his lifelong devotion to the most
improbable hypothesis of his time. It has been our custom to eulogize
his courage and his constancy to the truth; but if he had adopted
perpetual motion, instead of the rotundity of the earth, as his dogma,
he would have deserved our praises just as much. His sole claim to our
admiration is, that in the teeth of all precedent and likelihood, he
succeeded by one mistake in making another: because he fancied that by
sailing west he could find the Indies, he blundered upon a land whose
identity he never discovered. Doubtless his blunder was of unspeakable
value; but a blunder not the less it was; while as to his courage and
perseverance, as much has been shown by a thousand other scientific and
philosophical heretics, whose names have not survived, because the
thing they imagined turned out an error.

From another point of view, however, Columbus is specially a creature
of his age. It was an age which felt, it knew not why, that something
new must come to pass. The resources of Europe were exhausted; men had
reached the end of their tether, and demanded admittance to some wider
pasturage. It was much such a predicament as obtains now, four hundred
years later; we feel that changes--enlargements--are due, but know not
what or whence. The conception of a voyage across the Atlantic, in that
age, seemed as captivating, and almost as fantastic, as a trip to the
Moon or Mars would, to an adventurer of our time. Given the vehicle, no
doubt many volunteers would offer for the journey; Columbus could get a
ship, but the chances of his arriving at his proposed destination must
have appeared as problematical to him as the Moon enterprise in a
balloon would to a world-weary globe-trotter of to-day. It was not
merely that the ship was small and the Atlantic large and stormy; there
were legends of vast whirlpools, of abysmal oceanic cataracts, of
sea-monsters, malignant genii, and other portents not less terrifying
and fatal. Columbus would not have been surprised at falling in with
any of these things; but the physical courage which must have been his
most prominent trait, added to incorrigible pride of opinion, brought
him through.

But the significant feature of his achievement is, not that he sailed
or that he arrived, but that he was impelled, irresistibly as it were,
to make the attempt. He made it, because it was the one thing left in
the world that seemed worth doing; it was the only apparent way of
escape from the despair of the familiar and habitual; it was an
adventure charged with all unknown possibilities; once conceived, it
must be executed at whatever cost. Columbus was fascinated; the unknown
drew him like a magnet; he was the involuntary deputy of his period to
incarnate its yearnings in act. The hour had struck; and with it, as
always, appeared the man. So it has ever been in the history of the
world; though we, with characteristic vanity, uniformly put the cart
before the horse, and declare that it is the man that brings the hour.

Be that as it may, Columbus was fitted out with three boats by the
Spanish king and queen, set sail from Spain on the 3d of August, 1492,
and arrived at one of the Caribbean islands on the 12th of October of
the same year. He supposed that he had found an East Indian
archipelago; and with the easy emotional piety of his time and
temperament, he fell on his knees and thanked God, and took possession
of everything in sight in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella.

The deed had been done, and Columbus had his reward. It would have been
well for him had he recognized this fact, and not tried to get more. He
had found land on the other side of the Atlantic; what no other man had
believed possible, he had accomplished; he had carried his point, and
proved his thesis--or one so much resembling it that he never knew the
difference. This, and not a more sordid hope, had been the real motive
power of his career up to this time; and the moment when the light from
another world gleamed across the water to his hungry eyes had been the
happiest that he had ever known, or would know. A mighty hope had been
fulfilled; the longing of an age had been gratified in his triumph; a
fresh chapter in the world's history had been begun. The thoughts and
emotions that surged through the ardent Italian, as he knelt on that
coral beach, were lofty and unselfish; as were, in truth, those of the
age whose representative he was, when it saw him depart on his
adventure. But before the man of destiny had risen from his knees, he
had ceased to act as the instrument of God, and had begun to think of
personal emoluments. So much he must make over to Spain; so much he
might keep for himself; so much was promised to his shipmates. He would
be famous--yes: and rich and powerful too; he would be a great
vicegerent; his attire should be of silk and velvet, with a gold chain
about his neck, and gems on his hands. So adversity set his name among
the stars, and prosperity abased his soul to dust. The remaining years
of his life were a fruitless struggle to secure what he deemed his
rightful wages--to coin his immortal exploit into ducats; and his end
was sorrowful and dishonored. The proud self-abnegation of the ancient
Roman was lacking in the medieval Genoese.

The white-maned horses of the Atlantic once mastered, there came riders
enough. During the next thirty years such men as Amerigo Vespucci (who
enjoyed the not singular distinction of having his name associated with
the discovery of another man), the Cabots, father and son; Balboa, and
Magellan, crossed the sea and visited the new domain. Magellan
performed the only unprecedented feat left for mariners by sailing
round the earth by way of the South American straits that bear his
name; but Vasco da Gama had already entered the Pacific by the Cape of
Good Hope. It was by this time beginning to be understood that the new
land was really new, and not the other side of the old one; but this
only prompted the adventurers to get past or through it to the first
goal of their ambition. They had not yet realized the vastness of the
Pacific, and took America to be a mere breakwater protecting the
precious shores of Cathay. Later, they found that America repaid
looting on her own account; but meanwhile there was set on foot that
search for the Northwest Passage which resulted in the discovery of
almost everything except the Passage itself. To the craze for a
Northwest Passage is due the exploration of Baffin's and Hudson's Bays,
of the Gulf and River of St. Lawrence, and of the Great Lakes; the
establishment of the English and French fur-trading Companies, which
hastened the development of Canada; and the settlement of Oregon and
Washington. It led English and Spanish explorers and freebooters up the
California coast, and on to Vancouver and Bering Straits; Alaska was
circumvented, and the Northwest Passage was found, though the
everlasting ice mocked the efforts of the finders. In short, the entire
continent was tapped and sounded with a view to forcing a way through
or round it; and by the time the attempt was finally given up, the
contour, size, and possible value of America had been estimated much
more quickly and accurately than they would have been, had not India
lain west of it.

All this time Spain had been having the best of the bargain. She had
fastened upon the West Indies, Mexico, and Central and South America,
and had found gold there in abundance; she bade other nations keep
hands off, and was less solicitous than they about the rumored riches
of the Orient. Spain, in those days, was held to be invincible on the
sea; England's fight with the Spanish Armada was yet to come. But there
were already Englishmen of the Drake and Frobisher type who liked
nothing better than to capture a Spanish galleon, and "singe the king
of Spain's beard"; and these independent sea-rovers were becoming so
bold and numerous as to put the Spaniards to serious inconvenience and
loss. But the latter could not be ousted from their vantage ground; so
the English presently bethought themselves that there might be gold in
the more northerly as well as in the central parts of the Continent;
and they turned to seek it there. Nothing is more noticeable in every
phase of these events than the constant involuntary accomplishment of
something other--and in the end better--than the thing attempted. As
Columbus, looking for Indian spices, found America; as seekers of all
nations, in their quest for a Northwest Passage, charted and developed
the continent: so Sir Walter Raleigh and his companions, hunting for
gold along the northern Atlantic seaboard, took the first steps toward
founding the colonies which were in the sequel to constitute the germ
of the present United States.

Queen Elizabeth was on the throne of England; more than ninety years
had passed since Columbus had landed on his Caribbean island. In 1565 a
colony of French Huguenots at St. Augustine had, by a characteristic
act of Spanish treachery, been massacred, men, women, and children, at
the order of Melendez, and the French thus wiped out of the southern
coast of North America forever. While England remained Catholic, the
influence of Papal bulls in favor of Spanish authority in America, and
matrimonial alliances between the royal families of Spain and England,
had restrained English enterprise in the west. Henry VIII. had indeed
acted independently both of the Spaniard and of the Pope; but it was
not until Elizabeth's accession in 1558, bringing Protestantism with
her, that England ventured to assert herself as a nation in the new
found world. Willoughby had attempted, in 1553, the preposterous
enterprise of reaching India by sailing round Norway and the north of
Asia; but his expedition got no farther than the Russian port of
Archangel. In 1576 and the two succeeding years, Martin Frobisher went
on voyages to Labrador and neighboring regions, at first searching for
the Northwest Passage, afterward in quest of gold. The only result of
his efforts was the bringing to England of some shiploads of earth,
which had been erroneously supposed to contain the precious metal. In
1578, Sir Humphrey Gilbert had obtained a patent empowering him to
found a colony somewhere in the north; his object being rather to
develop the fisheries than to find gold or routes to India. He was
stepbrother of Sir Walter Raleigh, and the latter started with him on
the first voyage; but they were forced to put back soon after setting
out. Gilbert went again in 1583, and reached St. John's, where he
erected a pillar commemorating the English occupation; but he was
drowned in a storm on the way home. Raleigh, who had stayed in England,
and had acquired royal favor and a fortune, remained to carry out, in
his own way, the designs which Gilbert's death had left in suspense. In
1584 he began the work.

Raleigh perhaps deserves to be regarded as the greatest English
gentleman who ever lived. In addition to the learning of his time, he
had a towering genius, indomitable courage and constancy, lofty and
generous principles, far-seeing wisdom, Christian humanity, and a
charity that gave and forgave to the end. He was a courtier and a
statesman, a soldier and a sailor, a merchant and an explorer. His life
was one of splendid and honorable deeds; he was not a talker, and found
scant leisure to express himself in writing; though when he chose to
write poetry he approved himself best in the golden age of English
literature; and his "History of the World," composed while imprisonment
in the Tower prevented him from pursuing more active employments, is
inferior to no other produced up to that time. Such reverses as he met
with in life only spurred him to fresh efforts, and his successes were
magnificent, and conducive to the welfare of the world. He was a
patriot of the highest and purest type; a champion of the oppressed; a
supporter of all worthy enterprises, a patron of literature and art.
Withal, he was full of the warm blood of human nature; he had all the
fire, the tenderness, and the sympathies that may rightly belong to a
man. The mind is astonished in contemplating such a being; he is at
once so close to us, and so much above the human average. King James I.
of England, jealous of his greatness, imprisoned him for twelve years,
on a groundless charge, and finally slew him, at the age of sixty-six,
broken by disease, and saddened, but not soured, by the monstrous
ingratitude and injustice of his treatment. Upon the scaffold, he felt
of the edge of the ax which was to behead him, and smiled, remarking,
"A sharp medicine to cure me of my diseases!" Such are the exploits of
kings.

Raleigh was the first man who perceived that America was to be the home
of a white people: that it was to be a dwelling-place, not a mere
supply-house for freebooters and home traders. He resolved to do his
part toward making it so; he impoverished himself in the enterprise;
and though the colony which he planted in what is now North Carolina,
but was then called Virginia, in honor of the queen, who was pleased
thus to advertise her chastity--though this failed (by no fault of
Raleigh's) of its immediate object, yet the lesson thus offered bore
fruit in due season, and the colonization of the New World, shown to be
a possibility and an advantage, was taken up on the lines Raleigh had
drawn, and resulted in the settlement whose heirs we are.

In 1585, after receiving the favorable report of a preliminary
expedition, Raleigh sent out upward of a hundred colonists under the
command of Sir Richard Grenville, one of the heroic figures of the
time, a man of noble nature but fearful passions. They landed on the
island of Roanoke, off the mouth of the river of that name, and were
well received by the native tribes, who thought they were immortal and
divine, because they were without women, and possessed gunpowder. It
would have been well had the English responded in kind; but within a
few days, Grenville, angry at the non-production of a silver cup which
had been stolen from his party during a visit to a village, burned the
huts and destroyed the crops; and later, Lane, who had been left by
Grenville in command of the colony, invited the principal chief of the
region to a friendly conference, and murdered him. This method of
procedure would not have been countenanced by the great promoter of the
expedition; nor would he have encouraged the hunt for gold that was
presently undertaken. This was the curse of the time, and ever led to
disaster and blood. Nor did Lane escape the delusion that a passage
could be found through the land to the Indies; the savages, humoring
his ignorance for their own purposes, assured him that the Roanoke
River (which rises some two hundred miles inland) communicated with the
Pacific at a distance of but a few days' journey. Lane selected a party
and set hopefully forth to traverse fifty degrees of latitude; but ere
long his provisions gave out, and he was forced to go starving back
again. He arrived at the settlement just in time to save it from
annihilation by the Indians.

But there were able men among these colonists, and some things were
done which were not foolish. Hariot, who had scientific knowledge, and
was a careful observer, made notes of the products of the land, and
became proficient in tobacco smoking; he also tested and approved the
potato, and in other ways laid the foundation for a profitable export
and import trade. John White, an artist, who afterward was put in
charge of another colony, made drawings of the natives and their
appurtenances, which still survive, and witness his fidelity and skill.
Explorations up and down the coast, and for some distance inland, were
made; the salubrity of the climate was eulogized, and it was admitted
that the soil was of excellent fertility. In short, nothing was
lacking, in the way of natural conditions, to make the colony a
success; yet the Englishmen grew homesick and despondent, and longed to
return to England and English women. The supplies which they were
expecting from home had not arrived; and their situation was rendered
somewhat precarious, by the growing hostility of the natives, who had
come to the conclusion that these godlike white men were not persons
with whom it was expedient for them to associate.

At this juncture, down upon the coast suddenly swooped a fleet of over
twenty sail with the English flag flying, and no less a personage than
Sir Francis Drake in command. He was returning from a profitable
pirating expedition against the Spaniards in the West Indies, and
desired to see for himself how the colony sent out by his friend
Raleigh was prospering. Out of his easily-got abundance he generously
supplied the needs of the colonists, and presented them with a ship
into the bargain, in which they might sail home should circumstances
demand it. A couple of his most experienced officers, too, were added
to the gift of the generous freebooter; and the outlook was now very
different from what it had been a few days before. Yet fate was against
them; or, to speak more accurately, they had lost the spirit which
should animate pioneers, and when a touch of bad luck was added to
their indisposition, they incontinently beat a retreat. A storm arose,
which wrecked the ship that Drake had given them, and thus deprived
them of the means of escape in case other disasters should arrive. They
besought Drake to take them home with him; and he, with inexhaustible
good humor, agreed to do so. His fleet, with the slack-souled colonists
on board, had scarcely lost sight of the low shores of Roanoke, when
the supply ship that had been so long awaited arrived with all the
requisites for subduing the wilderness on board. She found the place
deserted, and, putting about, sailed for home again. A fortnight later
came Sir Richard Grenville with three ships more; and he, being of a
persistent nature, would not consent to lose altogether the fruit of
the efforts which had been made; he left fifteen of his men on the
island, to carry on until fresh colonists could be brought from
England. But before this could be done the men were dead, whether by
the act of God or of the savages; and the first English experience in
colonizing America was at an end.

The story of the second colony, immediately sent out by Raleigh, ends
with a mystery that probably hid a tragedy. Seventeen women and two
children accompanied the eighty-nine men of the party. Having
established the fact that the land was habitable and cultivatable,
Raleigh perceived that in order to render it attractive also it was
necessary that the colonists should have their helpmeets with them. For
the first time in history, therefore, the feet of English women pressed
our soil, and the voices of children made music in the woodland
solitudes. It had been designed that the more commodious bay of the
Chesapeake should be the scene of this settlement; but the naval
officer who should have superintended the removal was hungering for a
West Indian trading venture, and declined to act. They perforce
established themselves in the old spot, therefore, where the buildings
were yet standing on the northern end of the little island, which,
though deserted now, is for us historic ground. The routine of life
began; and before the ship sailed on her return trip to England, the
daughter of the governor and artist, John White, who was married to one
of his subordinates named Dare, had given birth to a daughter, and
called her Virginia. She was the first child of English blood who could
be claimed as American; she came into the world, from which she was so
soon to vanish, on the 18th of August, 1587. White returned to England
with the ship a week or two later. He was to return again speedily with
more colonists, and further supplies. But he never saw his daughter and
her infant after their farewell in the landlocked bay. He reached
England to find Raleigh and all the other strong men of England
occupied with plans to repel the invasion that threatened from Spain,
and which, in the shape of the Invincible Armada, was to be met and
destroyed in the English Channel, almost on the first anniversary of
the birth of Virginia Dare. Nothing could be done, at the moment, to
relieve the people at Roanoke; but in April of 1588, Raleigh found
time, with the defense of a kingdom on his hands, to equip two ships
and send them in White's charge to Virginia. All might have been well
had White been content to attend with a single eye to the business in
hand; but the seas were full of vessels which could be seized and
stripped of their precious cargoes, and White thought it would be
profitable to imitate the exploits of Drake and Grenville, and take a
few prizes to Roanoke with him. But he was the ass in the lion's hide.
One of his ships was itself attacked and gutted, and with the other he
fled in terror back to London. Raleigh could not help him now; his own
fortune was exhausted; and it was not until the Armada had come and
gone, and the country had in a measure recovered itself from the shocks
of war, that succor could be attempted. The charter which had been
granted to Raleigh enabled him to give liberal terms to a company of
merchants and others, who on their part could raise the funds for the
voyage. But though Raleigh executed this patent in the spring of 1589,
it was not until more than a year afterward that the expedition was
ready to sail. White went with them, and we may imagine with what
straining eyes he scanned the spot where he had last beheld his
daughter and grandchild, as the ship glided up the inlet.

But no one came forth between the trees to wave a greeting to his
long-deferred return; there were no figures on the shore, no smoke of
family fires rose heavenward; families and hearths alike were gone. The
place was a desert. Little Virginia Dare and the Lost Colony of Roanoke
had already passed out of history, leaving no clew to their fate except
the single word "CROATAN" inscribed on the bark of a tree. It was the
name of an island further down the coast; and had White gone thither,
he might even yet have found the lost. But he was a man unfitted in all
respects to live in that age and take part in its enterprise. He was a
soft, feeble, cowardly and unfaithful creature, yet vain and ambitious,
and eager to share the fame of men immeasurably larger and worthier
than he. He could draw pictures, but he could not do deeds; and now,
after having deserted those to whom he had been in honor bound to
cleave, he pleaded the excuse of bad weather and the lateness of the
season for abandoning them once more; and, re-embarking on his ship, he
went back with all his company to England. It was the dastardly ending
of the first effort, nobly conceived, and supported through five years,
to engraft the English race in the soil of America.

Tradition hazards the conjecture that the Roanoke colony, or some of
them, were cared for by the friendly Indians of Hatteras. There was a
rumor that seven of them were still living twenty years after White's
departure. But no certain news was ever had of them, though several
later attempts to trace them were made. Between the time when their
faint-hearted governor had deserted them, and his return, three years
had passed; and if they were not early destroyed by the hostile tribes,
they must have endured a more lingering pain in hoping against hope for
the white sails that never rose above the horizon. Most of them, if not
all, were doubtless massacred by the Indians, if not at once, then when
it became evident that no succor was to be expected for them. Some,
possibly, were carried into captivity; and it may be that Virginia Dare
herself grew up to become the white squaw of an Indian brave, and that
her blood still flows in the veins of some unsuspected red man. But it
is more likely that she died with the others, one of the earliest and
most innocent of the victims sacrificed on the altar of a great idea.

White disappears from history at this point; but Raleigh never forgot
his colony, and five times, at his own expense, and in the midst of
events that might have monopolized the energies of a score of ordinary
men, he dispatched expeditions to gain tidings of them. In 1595 he
himself sailed for Trinidad, on the northern coast of South America,
and explored the river Orinoco, nine degrees above the equator, It was
his hope to offset the power of Spain in Mexico and Peru by
establishing an English colony in Guiana. Wars claimed his attention
during the next few years, and then came his long imprisonment; but in
1616, two years before his execution, he headed a last expedition to
the southern coast of the land he had labored so faithfully to unite to
England. It failed of its object, and Raleigh lost his head.

But the purpose which he had steadfastly entertained did not die with
him; and we Americans claim him to-day as the first friend and father
of the conception of a great white people beyond the sea.

As we enter the Seventeenth Century, the figure which looms largest in
the foreground is that of Captain John Smith, governor of the colony at
Jamestown in 1607. But the way was prepared for him by a man as
honorable, though less distinguished, Bartholomew Gosnold by name, who
voyaged to the New England coast in 1602, and was the first to set foot
on its shores. The first land he sighted was what is now called Maine;
thence he steered southward, and disembarked on Cape Cod, on which he
bestowed that name. Proceeding yet further south, between the islands
off the coast, he finally entered the inclosed sound of Buzzard's Bay,
and landed on the island of Cuttyhunk. Gosnold was a prudent as well as
an adventurous man, and he was resolved to take all possible
precautions against being surprised by the Indians. On Cuttyhunk there
was a large pond, and in the pond there was an islet; and Gosnold, with
his score of followers, fixed upon this speck of rocky earth as the
most suitable spot in the western hemisphere wherein to plant the roots
of English civilization. They built a hut and made a boat, and gathered
together their stores of furs and sassafras; but these same stores
proved their undoing. They could not agree upon an equable division of
their wealth; and recognizing that disunion in a strange land was
weakness and peril, they all got into their ship and sailed back to
England, carrying their undivided furs and sassafras with them. By this
mishap, New England missed becoming the scene of the first permanent
English colony. For when, five years afterward, Gosnold returned to
America with a hundred men and adequate supplies, it was not to
Buzzard's Bay, but to the mouth of the James River, that he steered,
and on its banks the colony was founded. Gosnold himself seems to have
been a man of the type that afterward made the New England whalers
famous in all seas; the mariners of New Bedford, New London, Sag Harbor
and Nantucket. But the companions of his second voyage were by no means
of this stamp: the bulk of them were "gentlemen," who had no
familiarity with hard fare and hard work, and expected nature to
provide for them in the wilderness as bountifully as the London
caterers had done at home. To the accident which brought Gosnold to a
southerly instead of a northerly port on this occasion may be due the
fact that Virginia instead of Massachusetts became the home of the
emigrant cavaliers. Had they, as well as the Puritans, chosen New
England for their abiding place, an amalgamation might have taken place
which would have vitally modified later American history. But destiny
kept them apart in place as well as in sentiment and training; and it
is only in our own day that Reconstruction, and the development of
means of intercommunication, bid fair to make a homogeneous people out
of the diverse elements which for so many generations recognized at
most only an outward political bond.

Captain John Smith, fortunately, was neither a cavalier nor a simple
mariner, but a man in a class by himself, and just at that juncture the
most useful that could possibly have been attached to this adventure.
His career even before the present period had been so romantic that,
partly for that reason, and partly because he himself was his own chief
chronicler, historians have been prone to discredit or modify many of
its episodes. But what we know of Smith from other than a Smith source
tallies so well with the stories which rest upon his sole authority
that there seems to be no sound cause for rejecting the latter. After
making all deductions, he remains a remarkable personage, and his
influence upon the promotion of the English colonial scheme was wholly
beneficial. He was brave, ingenious, indefatigable, prudent and
accomplished; he knew what should be done, and was ever foremost in
doing it He took hold of the helpless and slow-witted colonists as a
master carpenter handles blocks of wood, and transformed them into an
efficient and harmonious structure, strong enough to withstand the
first onsets of misfortune, and to endure until the arrival of recruits
from home placed them beyond all danger of calamity.

Smith was born in England in 1579, and was therefore only twenty-eight
years of age when he embarked with Gosnold. Yet he had already fought
in the Netherlands, starved in France, and been made a galley-slave by
the Moslem. He had been shipwrecked at one time, thrown overboard at
another, and robbed at a third. Thrice had he met and slain Turkish
champions in the lists; and he had traversed the steppes of Russia with
only a handful of grain for food. He was not a man of university
education: the only schooling he had had was in the free schools of
Alford and Louth, before his fifteenth year; his father was a tenant
farmer in Lincolnshire, and though John was apprenticed to a trade, he
ran away while a mere stripling, and shifted for himself ever after. An
adventurer, therefore, in the fullest sense of the word, he was; and
doubtless he had the appreciation of his own achievements which
self-made men are apt to have. But there was sterling pith in him, a
dauntless and humane soul, and inexhaustible ability and resource. Such
a man could not fail to possess imagination, and imagination and
self-esteem combined conduce to highly-colored narrative; but that
Smith was a liar is an unwarranted assumption, which will not be
countenanced here.

The Gosnold colony had provided itself with a charter, granted by King
James, and as characteristic of that monarch as was his treatment of
Raleigh. It was the first of many specimens of absentee landlordism
from which America was to suffer. It began by setting apart an enormous
stretch of territory, bounded on the north by the latitude of the St.
Croix River, and on the south by that of Cape Fear, and extending
westward indefinitely. To this domain was given the general title of
Virginia. It was subdivided into two approximately equal parts, with a
neutral zone between them, which covered the space now occupied by the
cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, and the land
adjoining them. The northern division was given in charge to the
"Plymouth Company," and the southern to the "London Company"; they were
separate mercantile and colonizing organizations, but the charter
applied to both alike.

The colonies were to be under the immediate control of a council
composed of residents, but appointed by the king; this council was
subordinate to another, meeting in England; and this in its turn was
subject to the king's absolute authority. The emigrants were to pay a
yearly rent of one-fifth of the gold and silver produced, and a third
as much of the copper. A five per cent duty levied on alien traffic was
for the first five-and-twenty years to inure to the benefit of the
colony, but afterward should be the exclusive perquisite of the Crown.
The right to call themselves and their children English was permitted
to the emigrants; and they were also allowed to defend themselves
against attacks, though it was enjoined upon them to treat the natives
with kindness, and to endeavor to draw them into the fold of the Church.

Such was James's idea of what a charter for an American colony should
be. He was taking much for granted when he assumed the right to control
the emigrants at all; and he was careful to deprive them of any chance
to control in the least degree their own affairs. America was to be the
abode of liberty; but this monarch thought only of making it a field
for his private petty tyranny. The colonists were to be his own
personal slaves, and the deputy slaves of the Companies; after
discharging all their obligations to him and to them, they might do the
best they could for themselves with what was left, provided of course
that they strictly observed the laws which his Majesty was kind enough
also to draw up for them, the provisions of which included the penalty
of death for most offenses above petty larceny. A colony which, amid
the hardships and unfamiliar terrors of a virgin wilderness, could
enjoy all the benefits of a charter like this, and yet survive, would
seem hardy enough for any emergency. But James was king, and kings, in
those days, if they pleased no one else, pleased themselves.

As we have seen, the members of the colony, being persons unused to the
practice of the useful arts, were little apt to succeed even under the
most favoring conditions. But they had Smith, in himself a host, and a
few other good heads and able hands; and to speak truth, the provisions
of their charter do not seem to have unduly embarrassed them. It could
annoy and hamper them occasionally, but only themselves could work
themselves serious injury; there were three thousand miles of perilous
sea water between their paternal monarch and them, and the wilderness,
with all its drawbacks, breeds self-confidence and independence. The
mishaps of the colony were due to the shiftlessness of most of its
members, and to the insalubrity of the site chosen for their city of
Jamestown, whereby more than half of them perished during the first few
months. On the voyage out, Smith, who had probably made himself
distasteful to the gentlemen adventurers by his unconventional manners
and conversation, had been placed under restraint--to what extent is
not exactly known; and when the sealed orders under which they had
sailed were opened, and it was found that Smith was named a member of
the council, he was for some weeks not permitted to exercise his lawful
functions in that office. When the troubles began, however, the
helpless gentlemen were glad to avail themselves of his services, which
he with his customary good humor readily accorded them; and so
competent did he show himself that ere long he was in virtual command
of them all. The usual search for gold and for the passage through the
continent to India having been made, with the usual result, they all
set to work to build their fort and town, and to provide food against
the not improbable contingency of famine. As crops could not be raised
for the emergency, Smith set out to traffic with the natives, and
brought back corn enough for the general need. All this while he had
been contending with a prevalent longing on the part of the colonists
to get back to England; there was no courage left in them but his,
which abounded in proportion to their need for it. Prominent among the
malcontents was the deposed governor, Wingfield, who tried to bribe the
colonists to return; another member of the council was shot for mutiny.
In the end, Smith's will prevailed, and he was governor and council and
King James all in one; and when, at the beginning of winter, he had
brought the settlement to order and safety, he started on a journey of
exploration up the Chickahominy. He perceived the immense importance of
understanding his surroundings, and at the same time of establishing
friendly relations with the neighboring tribes of Indians; and it was
obvious that none but he (for the excellent Gosnold had died of fever
in the first months of the settlement) was capable of effecting these
objects. Accordingly he proceeded prosperously toward the headwaters of
the river, a dozen miles above its navigable point; but there, all at
once, he found himself in the midst of a throng of frowning warriors,
who were evidently resolved to put an end to his investigations, if not
to his existence, forthwith.

Another man than Smith would have committed some folly or rashness
which would have precipitated his fate; but Smith was as much at his
ease as was Julius Caesar of old on the pirate's ship. His two
companions were killed, but he was treated as a prisoner of rank and
importance by the brother of the great chief Powhatan, by whom he had
been captured. He interested and impressed his captors by his
conversation and his instruments; and at the same time he kept his eyes
and ears open, and missed no information that could be of use to
himself and his colony. Powhatan gave him an audience and seems to have
adopted a considerate attitude; at all events he sent him back to
Jamestown after a few days, unharmed, and escorted by four Indians,
with a supply of corn. But precisely what occurred during those few
days we shall never certainly know; since we must choose between
accepting Smith's unsupported story, only made public years afterward,
and believing nothing at all. Smith's tale has charmed the imagination
of all who have heard it; nothing could be more prettily romantic; the
trouble with it is, it seems to most people too pretty and romantic to
be true. Yet it is simple enough in itself, and not at all improbable;
there is no question as to the reality of the dramatis personae of the
story, and their relations one to another render such an episode as was
alleged hardly more than might reasonably be looked for.

The story is--as all the world knows, for it has been repeated all over
the world for nearly three hundred years, and has formed the subject of
innumerable pictures--that Powhatan, for reasons of high policy
satisfactory to himself, had determined upon the death of the
Englishman, rightly inferring that the final disappearance of the
colony would be the immediate sequel thereof. The sentence was that
Smith's brains were to be knocked out with a bludgeon; and he was led
into the presence of the chief and the warriors, and ordered to lay his
head upon the stone. He did so, and the executioners poised their clubs
for the fatal blow; but it never fell. For Smith, during his captivity,
had won the affection of the little daughter of Powhatan, a girl of
ten, whose name was Pocahontas. She was too young to understand or fear
his power over the Indians; but she knew that he was a winning and
fascinating being, and she could not endure that he should be
sacrificed. Accordingly, at this supreme crisis of his career, she
slipped into the dreadful circle, and threw herself upon Smith's body,
so that the blow which was aimed at his life must kill her first. She
clung to him and would not be removed, until her father had promised
that Smith should be spared.

So runs the Captain's narrative, published for the first time in 1624,
after Pocahontas's appearance in London, and her death in 1617. Why he
had not told it before is difficult to explain. Perhaps he had promised
Powhatan to keep it secret, lest the record of his sentimental clemency
should impair his authority over the tribes. Or it may have been an
embellishment of some comparatively trifling incident of Smith's
captivity, suggested to his mind as he was compiling his "General
History of Virginia." It can never be determined; but certainly his
relations with the Indian girl were always cordial, and it seems
unlikely that Powhatan would have permitted him to return to Jamestown
except for some unusual reason.

Pocahontas's life had vicissitudes such as seldom befall an Indian
maiden. Some time between the Smith episode of 1607, and the year 1612,
she married one of her father's tributary chiefs, and went to live with
him on his reservation. There she was in some manner kidnapped by one
Samuel Argall, and held for ransom. The ransom was paid, but Pocahontas
was not sent back; and the following year she was married to John
Rolfe, a Jamestown colonist, and baptized as Rebecca. He took her to
London, where she was a nine days' wonder; and they had a son, whose
blood still flows in not a few American veins to-day. If she was ten
years old in 1607, he must have been no more than twenty at the time of
her death in Gravesend, near London. But her place in American history
is secure, as well as in the hearts of all good Americans. She was the
heroine of the first American romance; and she is said to have been as
beautiful as all our heroines should rightly be.

When Smith, with his Indian escort, got back to Jamestown, he was just
in season to prevent the colony from running away in the boat. Soon
after a new consignment of emigrants and supplies arrived from England;
but again there were fewer men than gentlemen, and Smith sent back a
demand for "rather thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen,
blacksmiths, masons, and diggers up of trees' roots, well provided,
than a thousand of such as we have." There spoke the genuine pioneer,
whose heart is in his work, and who can postpone "gentility" until it
grows indigenously out of the soil. The Company at home were indignant
that their colony had not ere now reimbursed them for their
expenditure, and much more; and they sent word that unless profits were
forthcoming forthwith (one-fifth of the gold and silver, and so forth)
they would abandon the colony to its fate. One cannot help admiring
Smith for refraining from the obvious rejoinder that to be abandoned
was the dearest boon that they could crave; but a sense of humor seems
to have been one of the few good qualities which the Captain did not
possess. He intimated to the Company that money was not to be picked up
ready made in Virginia, but must be earned by hard work with hands and
heads in the field and forest. It is his distinction to have been the
first man of eminence visiting the new world who did not think more of
finding gold, or the passage to India, or both, than of anything else.
Smith knew that in this world, new or old, men get what they work for,
and in the long run no more than that; and he made his gentlemen
colonists take off their coats and blister their gentlemanly hands with
the use of the spade and the ax. It is said that they excelled as
woodcutters, after due instruction; and they were undoubtedly in all
respects improved by this first lesson in Americanism. The American ax
and its wielders have become famous since that day; and the gentlemen
of Jamestown may enjoy the credit of having blazed the way.

Fresh emigrants kept coming in, of a more or less desirable quality, as
is the case with emigrants still. Some of them had been sent out by
other organizations than the London Company, and bred confusion; but
Smith was always more than equal to the emergency, and kept his growing
brood in hand. He had the satisfaction of feeling that he was the right
man in the right place; and let the grass grow under neither his feet
nor theirs. The abandonment threat of the London Company led him to
take measures to make the colony independent so far as food was
concerned, and a tract of land was prepared and planted with corn.
Traffic for supplies with the Indians was systematized; and by the time
Smith's year of office had expired the Jamestown settlement was
self-supporting, and forever placed beyond the reach of
annihilation--though, the very year after he had left it, it came
within measurable distance thereof.

He now returned to England, and never revisited Jamestown; but he by no
means relaxed his interest in American colonization, or his efforts to
promote it. In 1614 he once more sailed westward with two ships, on a
trading and exploring enterprise, which was successful. He examined and
mapped the northern coast, already seen by Gosnold, and bestowed upon
the country the name of New England. Traditions of his presence and
exploits are still told along the shores of Maine, New Hampshire and
Massachusetts. In the year following he tried to found a small colony
somewhere in these regions, but was defeated by violent storms; and at
a subsequent attempt he fell in with French pirates, and his ship and
fortune were lost, though he himself escaped in an open skiff: the
chains were never forged that could hold this man. Nor was his spirit
broken; he took his map and his description of New England, and
personally canvassed all likely persons with a view to fitting out a
new expedition. In 1617, aided perhaps by the interest which Pocahontas
had aroused in London, he was promised a fleet of twenty vessels, and
the title of Admiral of New England was bestowed upon him. Admiral he
remained till his death; but the fleet he was to command never put
forth to sea. A ship more famous than any he had captained was to sail
for New England in 1620, and land the Pilgrims on Plymouth. Rock.
Smith's active career was over, though he was but eight-and-thirty
years of age, and had fifteen years of life still before him. He had
drunk too deeply of the intoxicating cup of adventure and achievement
ever to be content with a duller draught; and from year to year he
continued to use his arguments and representations upon all who would
listen. But he no longer had money of his own, and he was forestalled
by other men. He was to have no share in the development of the country
which he had charted and named. At the time of his death in London in
1632, poor and disappointed, Plymouth, Salem and Boston had been
founded, Virginia had entered upon a new career, and Maryland had been
settled by the Catholics under Lord Baltimore. The Dutch had created
New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island in 1623; and the new nation in the
new continent was fairly under way.

Jamestown, as has been said, narrowly escaped extinction in the winter
of 1609. The colonists found none among their number to fill Smith's
place, and soon relapsed into the idleness and improvidence which he
had so resolutely counteracted. They ate all the food which he had laid
up for them, and when it was gone the Indians would sell them no more.
Squads of hungry men began to wander about the country, and many of
them were murdered by the savages. The mortality within the settlement
was terrible, and everything that could be used as food was eaten; at
length cannibalism was begun; the body of an Indian, and then the
starved corpses of the settlers themselves were devoured. Many crawled
away to perish in the woods; others, more energetic, seized a vessel
and became pirates. In short, such scenes were enacted as have been
lately beheld in India and in Cuba. The severity of the famine may be
judged from the fact that out of five hundred persons at the beginning
of the six months, only sixty diseased and moribund wretches survived.
And this in a land which had been described by its discoverers as a
very Garden of Eden, flowing with milk and honey.

Meanwhile, great things were preparing in England. Smith's warning that
America must be regarded and treated as an agricultural and industrial
community, and not as a treasure-box, had borne fruit; and a new
charter was applied for, which should more adequately satisfy the true
conditions. It was granted in 1609; Lord Salisbury was at the head of
the promoters, and with him were associated many hundreds of the lords,
commoners and merchants of England. The land assigned to them was a
strip four hundred miles in breadth north and south of Old Point
Comfort, and across to the Pacific, together with all islands lying
within a hundred miles of shore. In respect of administrative matters,
the tendency of the new charter was toward a freer arrangement; in
especial, the company was to exercise the powers heretofore lodged with
the king, and the supreme council was to be chosen by the shareholders.
The governor was the appointee of the corporation, and his powers were
large and under conditions almost absolute. The liberties of the
emigrants themselves were not specifically enlarged, but they were at
least emancipated from the paternal solicitude of the stingy and
self-complacent pettifogger who graced the English throne.

Lord Delaware was chosen governor; and Newport, Sir Thomas Gates and
Sir George Somers were the commissioners who were to conduct the
affairs of the colony until his arrival. A large number of emigrants,
many of whom contributed in money and supplies to the expedition, were
assembled, and the fleet numbered altogether nine vessels. But Newport
and his fellow commissioners suffered shipwreck on the Bermudas, and
did not reach Jamestown till nine months later, in May, 1610. The
calamitous state of things which there awaited them was an unwelcome
surprise; and the despairing colonists would be contented with nothing
short of exportation to Newfoundland. But before they could gain the
sea, Lord Delaware with his ships and provisions was met coming into
port; and the intending fugitives turned back with him. The hungry were
fed, order was restored, and industry was re-established. A wave of
religious feeling swept over the little community; the rule of Lord
Delaware was mild, but just and firm; and all would have been well had
not his health failed, and compelled him, in the spring of 1611, to
return to England. The colony was disheartened anew, and the arrival of
Sir Thomas Dale in Delaware's place did not at first relieve the
depression; his training had been military, and he administered affairs
by martial law. But he believed in the future of the enterprise, and so
impressed his views upon the English council that six more ships, with
three hundred emigrants, were immediately sent to their relief. Grates,
who brought these recruits to Jamestown, assumed the governorship, and
a genuine prosperity began. Among the most important of the
improvements introduced was an approximation to the right of private
ownership in land, which had hitherto been altogether denied, and which
gave the emigrants a personal interest in the welfare of the
enterprise. In 1612 a third charter was granted, still further
increasing the privileges of the settlers, who now found themselves
possessed of almost the same political powers as they had enjoyed at
home. It was still possible, as was thereafter shown, for unjust and
selfish governors to inflict misery and discontent upon the people; but
it was also possible, under the law, to give them substantial freedom
and happiness; and that was a new light in political conceptions.

More than thirty years had now passed since Raleigh first turned his
mind to the colonizing of Virginia. He was now approaching the
scaffold; but he could feel a lofty satisfaction in the thought that it
was mainly through him that an opportunity of incalculable magnitude
and possibilities had been given for the enlargement and felicity of
his race. He had sowed the seed of England beyond the seas, and the
quality of the fruit it should bear was already becoming apparent to
his eyes, soon to close forever upon earthly things. The spirit of
America was his spirit. He was for freedom, enlightenment, and
enterprise; and whenever a son of America has fulfilled our best ideal
of what an American should be, we find in him some of the traits and
qualities which molded the deeds and colored the thoughts of this
mighty Englishman.

Nor can we find a better example of the restless, practical,
resourceful side of the American character than is offered in Captain
John Smith; even in his boastfulness we must claim kinship with him.
His sterling manhood, his indomitable energy, his fertile invention,
his ability as a leader and as a negotiator, all ally him with the
traditional Yankee, who carries on in so matter-of-fact a way the
solution of the problems of the new democracy. Both these men, each in
his degree, were Americans before America.

And with them we may associate the name of Columbus; to him also we
must concede the spiritual citizenship of our country; not because of
the bare fact that he was the first to reach its shores, but because he
had a soul valiant enough to resist and defy the conservatism that will
believe in no new thing, and turns life into death lest life should
involve labor and self-sacrifice. Columbus, Smith, and Raleigh stand at
the portals of our history, types of the faith, success and honor which
are our heritage.



CHAPTER SECOND

THE FREIGHT OF THE MAYFLOWER


The motive force which drove the English Separatists and Puritans to a
voluntary exile in New England in 1620 and later, had its origin in the
brain of the son of a Saxon slate cutter just a century before. Martin
Luther first gave utterance to a mental protest which had long been on
the tongue's tip of many thoughtful and conscientious persons in
Europe, but which, till then, no one had found the courage, or the
energy, or the conviction, or the clear-headedness (as the case might
be) to formulate and announce. Once having reached its focus, however,
and attained its expression, it spread like a flame in dry stubble, and
produced results in men and nations rarely precedented in the history
of the world, whose vibrations have not yet died away.

Henry VIII. of England was born and died a Catholic; though of religion
of any kind he never betrayed an inkling. His Act of Supremacy, in
1534, which set his will above that of the Pope of Rome, had no
religious bearing, but merely indicated that he wanted to divorce one
woman in order to marry another. Nevertheless it made it incumbent upon
the Pope to excommunicate him, and thus placed him, and England as
represented by him, in a quasi-dissenting attitude toward the orthodox
faith. And coming as it did so soon after Luther's outbreak, it may
have encouraged Englishmen to think on lines of liberal belief.

Passionate times followed in religious--or rather in
theological--matters, all through the Sixteenth Century. The
fulminations of Luther and the logic of Calvin set England to
discussing and taking sides; and when Edward VI. came to the throne, he
was himself a Protestant, or indeed a Puritan, and the stimulus of
Puritanism in others. But the mass of the common people were still
unmoved, because there was no means of getting at them, and they had no
stomach for dialectics, if there had been. The new ideas would probably
have made little headway had not Edward died and Mary the Catholic come
red-hot with zeal into his place. She lost no time in catching and
burning all dissenters, real or suspected; and as many of these were
honest persons who lived among the people, and were known and approved
by them, and as they uniformly endured their martyrdom with admirable
fortitude and good-humor, falling asleep in the crackling flames like
babes at the mother's breast, Puritanism received an advertisement such
as nothing since Christianity had enjoyed before, and which all the
unaided Luthers, Melanchthons and Calvins in the world could not have
given it.

This lasted five years, after which Mary went to her reward, and
Elizabeth came to her inheritance. She was no more of a religion-monger
than her distinguished father had been; but she was, like him, jealous
of her authority, and a martinet for order and obedience at all costs.
A certain intellectual voluptuousness of nature and an artistic
instinct inclined her to the splendid forms and ceremonies of the
Catholic ritual; but she was too good a politician not to understand
that a large part of her subjects were unalterably opposed to the
papacy. After some consideration, therefore, she adopted the expedient
of a compromise, the substance of which was that whatever was handsome
and attractive in Catholicism was to be retained, and only those
technical points dropped which made the Pope the despot of the Church.
In ordinary times this would have answered very well; human nature
likes to eat its cake and have it too; but this time was anything but
ordinary. The reaction from old to new ways of thinking, and the
unforgotten persecutions of Mary, had made men very fond of their
opinions, and preternaturally unwilling to enter into bargains with
their consciences. At the same time loyalty to the Crown was still a
fetich in England, as indeed it always has been, except at and about
the time when Oliver Cromwell and others cut off the head of the First
Charles. Consequently when Elizabeth and Whitgift, her Archbishop of
Canterbury, set about putting their house in order in earnest, they
were met with a mixture of humble loyalty and immovable resistance
which would have perplexed any potentates less single-minded. But
Elizabeth and Whitgift were not of the sort that sets its hand to the
plow and then turns back; they went earnestly on with their banishments
and executions, paying particular attention to the Separatists, but
keeping plenty in hand for the Puritans also.--The Separatists, it may
be observed, were so called because their aim was to dispart themselves
entirely from the orthodox communion; the Puritans were willing to
remain in the fold, but had it in mind to purify it, by degrees, from
the defilement which they held it to have contracted. The former would
not in the least particular make friends with the mammon of
unrighteousness, or condone the sins of the Scarlet Woman, or of
anybody else; they would not inhale foul air, with a view to sending it
forth again disinfected by the fragrance of their own lungs. They took
their stand unequivocally upon the plain letter of Scripture, and did
away with all that leaned toward conciliating the lighter sentiments
and emotions; they would have no genuflexions, no altars, no forms and
ceremonies, no priestly vestments, no Apostolic Succession, no priests,
no confessions, no intermediation of any kind between the individual
and his Creator. The people themselves should make and unmake their own
"ministers," and in all ways live as close to the bone as they could.
The Puritans were not opposed to any of these beliefs; only they were
not so set upon proclaiming and acting upon them in season and out of
season; they contended that the idolatry of ritual, since it had been
several centuries growing up, should be allowed an appreciable time to
disappear. It will easily be understood that, at the bottom of these
religious innovations and inflammations, was a simple movement toward
greater human freedom in all directions, including the political. It
mattered little to the zealots on either side whether or not the secret
life of a man was morally correct; he must think in a certain
prescribed way, on pain of being held damnable, and, if occasion
served, of being sent to the other world before he had opportunity to
further confirm his damnation. The dissenters, when they got in motion,
were just as intolerant and bigoted as the conformists; and toward none
was this intolerance more strongly manifested than toward such as were
in the main, but not altogether, of their way of thinking. The Quakers
and the Independents had almost as hard an experience in New England,
at the hands of the Puritans, as the latter had endured from good Queen
Bess and her henchmen a few years before. But really, religion, in the
absolute sense, had very little to do with these movements and
conflicts; the impulse was supposed to be religion because religion
dwells in the most interior region of a man's soul. But the craving for
freedom also proceeds from an interior place; and so does the lust for
tyranny. Propinquity was mistaken for identity, and anything which was
felt but could not be reasoned about assumed a religious aspect to the
subject of it, and all the artillery of Heaven and Hell, and the
vocabulary thereof, were pressed into service to champion it.

But New England had to be peopled, and this was the way to people it.
The dissenters perceived that, though they might think as they pleased
in England, they could not combine this privilege with keeping clear of
the fagot or the gibbet; and though martyrdom is honorable, and perhaps
gratifying to one's vanity, it can be overdone.

They came to the conclusion, accordingly, that practical common sense
demanded their expatriation; and some of them humbly petitioned her
Majesty to be allowed to take themselves off. The Queen did not show
herself wholly agreeable to this project; womanlike, and queenlike, she
wanted to convince them even more than to be rid of them; or if they
must be got rid of, she preferred to dispose of them herself in the
manner prescribed for stubborn heretics. But the lady was getting on in
years, and was not so ardently loved as she had been; and her activity
against the heretics could not keep pace with her animosity. She had
succeeded in many things, and her reign was accounted glorious; but she
had won no glory by the Puritans and Separatists, and her campaign
against them had not succeeded. They were stronger than ever, and were
to grow stronger yet. It was remembered, too, by her servants, that,
when she was dead, some one might ascend the throne who was less averse
to nonconformity than she had been; and then those who had persecuted
might suffer persecution in their turn. So although the prayer of the
would-be colonists was not granted, the severity against them was
relaxed; and as Elizabeth's last breath rattled in her throat, the
mourners had one ear cocked toward the window, to hear in what sort of
a voice James was speaking.

Their fears had been groundless. The new king spoke Latin, and
"peppered the Puritans soundly." The walls of Hampton Court resounded
with his shrill determination to tolerate none of their nonsense; and
he declared to the assembled prelates, who were dissolving in tears of
joy, that bishops were the most trustworthy legs a monarch could walk
on. The dissenters, who had hoped much, were disappointed in
proportion; but they were hardened into an opposition sterner than they
had ever felt before. They must help themselves, since no man would
help them; and why not--since they had God on their side? They
controlled the House of Commons, and made themselves felt there, till
James declared that he preferred a hermitage to ruling such a pack of
malcontents. The clergy renewed their persecutions; the government of
England was a despotism of the strictest kind; and the fire which had
been repressed in Puritan bosoms began to emit sullen sparks through
their eyes and lips.

A group of them in the north of England established a church, and
called upon all whom it might concern to shake off anti-Christian
bondage. John Robinson and William Brewster gave it their support, and
their meetings were made interesting by the spies of the government.
Finally they were driven to attempt an escape to Holland; and, after
one miscarriage, they succeeded in getting off from the coast of
Lincolnshire in the spring of 1608, and were transported to Amsterdam.
They could but tarry there; their only country now was Heaven;
meanwhile they were wandering Pilgrims on the face of the earth, as
their Lord had been before them. From Amsterdam they presently removed
to Leyden, where they conducted themselves with such propriety as to
win the encomiums of the natives. But their holy prosperity did not
make them happy, or enable them to be on comfortable terms with the
Dutch language; they could not get elbow-room, or feel that they were
doing themselves justice; and as the rumors of a fertile wilderness
overseas came to their ears, they began to contemplate the expediency
of betaking themselves thither. It was now the year 1617; and
negotiations were entered into with the London Company to proceed under
their charter.

The London Company were disposed to consider the proposition favorably,
but the affair dragged, and when it was brought before the government
it was quashed by Bacon, who opined that the coat of Christ must be
seamless, and that even in a remote wilderness heretics must not be
permitted to rend it. The Pilgrims might have replied that if a coat is
already torn, it profits not to declare it whole; but they were not
students of repartee, and merely relinquished efforts to secure support
in that direction. They must go into exile without official sanction,
that was all. The king's law enjoined, to be sure, that if any
dissenters were discovered abroad they were straightway to be sent to
England for discipline; but inasmuch as the threat of exile was, at the
same time, held over the same dissenters at home, it would seem a
saving of trouble all round to go abroad and trust to God. "If they
mean to wrong us," they aptly remarked, "a royal seal, though it were
as broad as the house floor, would not protect us." A suggestion that
the Dutchmen fit them out for their voyage, and share their profits,
fell through on the question of protection against other nations; and
when they had prepared their minds to make the venture without any
protection at all, it turned out that there was not capital enough in
the community to pay for transport. Within three years, however, this
difficulty was overcome, and in July of 1620 two ships were hired--the
"Speedwell" and the "Mayflower"--and the progenitors of religious and
civil liberty in America were ready to set forth.

There was not accommodation for them all on the two vessels, the one of
sixty tons, the other of thrice as many; so a division was made,
Robinson remaining in Leyden with one party, until means could be had
to bring them over; and Brewster accompanying the emigrants, supported
by John Carver and Miles Standish. Robinson, one of the finest and
purest spirits of the time, died while waiting to join his friends; but
most of the others were brought over in due season.

The hymns of praise and hope which were up-lifted on the shores of
Delft Haven, in the hour of farewell between those who went and those
who stayed, though the faith which inspired them was stanch, and the
voices which chanted them musical and sweet, could not restrain the
tears that flowed at the severing of ties which had been welded by
exile, hardship, and persecution for conscience' sake; nor were the two
"feasts" which comforted the bellies of the departing ones able to
console their hearts. It is different with trips across the Atlantic
nowadays: and different, likewise, are the motives which prompt them.

The "Speedwell" turned back at Plymouth, England, and the "Mayflower"
went on alone, with her company of one hundred and two, including
women, some of whom were soon to be mothers. The Atlantic, though a
good friend of theirs, was rough and boisterous in its manners, and
tossed them on their way rudely; in that little cabin harrowing
discomfort must have been undergone, and Christian forbearance sorely
tried. The pitching and tossing lasted more than two months, from the
6th of September till the 7th of December, when they sighted--not the
Bay of New York, as they had intended, but the snow-covered sand mounds
of Cape Cod. It was at best an inhospitable coast, and the time of
their visit could not have been worse chosen.

But indeed they were to be tested to the utmost; their experiences
during that winter would have discouraged oak and iron; but it had no
such effect upon these English men and women of flesh and blood. The
New England winter climate has its reputation still; but these people
were not fit for the encounter. They had been living in the moist
mildness of Holland for thirteen years, and for more than sixty days
had been penned in that stifling "Mayflower" cabin, seasick, bruised
and sleepless. It sleeted, snowed, rained and froze, and they could
find no place to get ashore on; their pinnace got stove, and the icy
waves wet them to the marrow. Standish and some others made
explorations on land; but found nothing better than some baskets of
maize and a number of Indian graves buried in the snow-drifts. At last
they stumbled upon a little harbor, upon which abutted a hollow between
low hills, with an icebound stream descending through it to the sea.
They must make shift with that or perish. It was the 21st of December.


That date is inscribed on the front page of our history, and the
Pilgrim Fathers and their wives and daughters are celebrated persons,
though they were only a lot of English farmers in exile for heresy. But
no dreams of renown visited them then; they had nothing to uphold them
but their amazing faith. What that faith must have been their conduct
demonstrates; but it is difficult to comprehend such a spirit; we
remember all the persecutions, all the energy of new convictions, and
still it seems miraculous. Liberty to think as they pleased, and to act
upon their belief: that was all they had to fight with. It seems very
thin armor, an ineffective sword: but what a victory they won!

Before they disembarked, a meeting was held in the cabin for the
transaction of certain business. Since then, whenever a handful of
Yankees have been gathered together, it has been their instinct to
organize and pass resolutions. It is the instinct of order and
self-government, the putting of each man in his proper place, and
assigning to him his function. This meeting of the Pilgrims was the
prototype, and the resolutions they passed constitute the model upon
which our commonwealth is based. They promised one another, in the
presence of God, equal laws and fidelity to the general good: the
principles of a free democracy.

They disembarked on the flat bowlder known as Plymouth Rock and set to
work to make their home. With the snow under their feet, the dark,
naked woods hemming them in, and concealing they knew not what savage
perils; with the bitter waves flinging frozen spray along the shore,
and immitigable clouds lowering above them--memory may have drawn a
picture of the quiet English vales in which they were born, or of the
hazy Dutch levels, with the windmills swinging their arms slumberously
above the still canals, and the clean streets and gabled façades of the
prosperous Holland town which had sheltered and befriended them. They
thought of faces they loved and would see no more, and of the secure
and tranquil lives they might have led, but for that tooth of
conscience at their hearts, which would give them peace only at the
cost of almost all that humanity holds dear. Did any of them wish they
had not come? did any doubt in his or her heart whether a cold
abstraction was worth adopting in lieu of the great, warm, kindly
world? Verily, not one!

They got to work at their home-making without delay; but all were ill,
and many were dying. That winter they put up with much labor a few log
huts; but their chief industry was the digging of clams and of graves.
Half of their number were buried before the summer, and there was not
food enough for the rest to eat. John Carver, who had been elected
governor at landing, died in April, having already lost his son. But
those who did survive their first year lived long; it is wonder that
they ever died at all, who could survive such an experience.

Spring came, and with it a visitor. It was in March--not a salubrious
month in New England; but the trees were beginning to pat out brown
buds with green or red tips, and grass and shrubs were sprouting in
sheltered places, though snow still lay in spots where sunshine could
not fall. The trailing arbutus could be found here and there, with a
perfume that all the cruelty of winter seemed to have made only more
sweet. Birds were singing, too, and the settlers had listened to them
with joy; they had gone near to forget that God had made birds. On some
days, from the south, came the breathing of soft, fragrant airs; and
there were breadths of blue in the sky that looked as if so fresh and
tender a hue must have been just created.

The men, in thick jerkins, heavy boots, and sugarloaf hats, were busy
about the clearing; some, like Miles Standish, wore a steel plate over
their breasts, and kept their matchlocks within reach, for though a
pestilence had exterminated the local Indians before they came, and,
with the exception of one momentary skirmish, in which no harm was
done, nothing had been seen or heard of the red men--still it was known
that Indians existed, and it was taken for granted that they would be
hostile. Meanwhile the women, in homespun frocks and jackets, with
kerchiefs round their shoulders, and faces in which some trace of the
English ruddiness had begun to return, sat spinning in the doorways of
the huts, keeping an eye on the kettles of Indian meal. The morning
sunlight fell upon a scene which, for the first time, seemed homelike:
not like the lost homes in England, but a place people could live human
lives in, and grow fond of. The hope of spring was with them.

All at once, down the forest glade, treading noiselessly on moccasined
feet, came a tall, wild, unfamiliar figure, with feathers in his black
hair, and black eyes gleaming above his high cheekbones. An Indian, at
last! He had come so silently that he had emerged from the shadow of
the forest and was almost amid them before he was seen. Some of the
settlers, perhaps, felt a momentary tightening round the heart; for
though we are always in the hollow of God's hand, there are times when
we are surprised into forgetfulness of that security, and are concerned
about carnal perils. Captain Standish, who had taken a flying shot at
some of these heathen four or five months ago, caught up a loaded
musket leaning against the corner of a hut, and stood on his guard,
doubting that more of the savages were lurking behind the trees. He had
even thus early in American history come to the view long afterward
formulated in the epigram that the only good Indians are the dead ones.

But the keen, spare savage made no hostile demonstration; he paused
before the captain, with the dignity of his race, and held out his
empty hands. And then, to the vast astonishment of Standish and of the
others who had gathered to his support, he opened his mouth and spoke
English: "Welcome, Englishmen!" said he. They must have fancied, for an
instant, that the Lord had wrought a special miracle for them, in
bestowing upon this native of the primeval forest the gift of tongues.

There was, however, nothing miraculous about Samoset, who had picked up
his linguistic accomplishment, such as it was, from a fellow savage who
had been kidnapped and taken to England, whom he afterward introduced
to the colony, where he made himself useful. Samoset's present business
was as embassador from the great chief and sachem, Massasoit, lord of
everything thereabout, who sent friendly greetings, and would be
pleased to confer with the new comers, at their convenience, and
arrange an alliance.

These were good words, and they must have taken a weight from every
heart there; not only the dread of immediate attack, but the
omnipresent and abiding anxiety that the time would come when they
would have to fight for their lives, and defend the persecuted church
of the Lord against foes who knew nothing of conformist or
nonconformist, but who were as proficient as Queen Mary herself in the
use of fire and torture. These misgivings might now be dismissed; if
the ruler of so many tribes was willing to stand their friend, who
should harm them? So they all gathered round Samoset on that sunny
spring morning; the women observing curiously and in silence his
strange aspect and gestures, and occasionally exchanging glances with
one another at some turn of the talk; while the sturdy Miles, and
Governor Carver, pale with illness which within a month reunited him
with the son he had loved, and Elder Brewster, with his serious mien,
and Bradford, who was to succeed Carver, with his strong, authoritative
features and thoughtful forehead;--these and more than a score more of
the brethren stood eying their visitor, questioning him earnestly and
trying to make out his meaning from his imperfect English gruntings.
And they spoke one to another of the action that should be taken on his
message, or commented with pious exclamations on the mercy of the Lord
in thus raising up for them protectors even in the wilderness.
Meanwhile a chipmunk flitted along the bole of a fallen tree, a thrush
chirped in the brake, a deer, passing airy-footed across an opening in
the forest, looked an instant and then turned and plunged fleetly away
amid the boughs, and a lean-bellied wolf, prospecting for himself and
his friends, stuck his sinister snout through a clump of underbrush,
and curled his lips above the long row of his white teeth in an ugly
grin. This friendship boded no good to him.

The coming of Samoset was followed after a while by the introduction of
Squanto, the worthy savage who had enjoyed the refining influences of
distant England, whose services as interpreter were of much value in
that juncture; and after a short time Massasoit himself accepted the
settlers' invitation to become their guest during the making of the
treaty. He was received with becoming honor; the diplomatists proceeded
at once to business, and before twilight the state paper had been drawn
up, signed and sealed. Its provisions ran that both parties were to
abstain from harming each other, were to observe an offensive and
defensive alliance, and to deliver up offenders. These terms were
religiously kept for half a century; by which time the colonists were
able to take care of themselves. Its good effects were illustrated in
the case of the chief Canonicus, who was disposed to pick a quarrel
with the Englishmen, and sent them, as a symbol of his attitude, a
rattlesnake's skin wrapped round a sheaf of arrows. Bradford, to
indicate that he also understood the language of emblems, sent the skin
back stuffed with powder and bullets. Canonicus seems to have fancied
that these substances were capable of destroying him spontaneously, and
returned them with pacific assurances. Such weapons, combined with the
alliance, were too much for him. Canonicus was chief of the
Narragansetts; Massasoit, of the Wampanoags. In 1676 the son of
Massasoit, for some fancied slight, made war upon the settlers, and the
Narragansetts helped him; in this war, known as King Philip's, the
settlers suffered severely, though they were victorious. But had it
come during the early years of their sojourn, not one of them would
have survived, and New England might never have become what she is now.

Meantime the Pilgrims, pilgrims no longer, settled down to make the
wilderness blossom as the rose. At their first landing they had agreed,
like the colonists of Virginia, to own their land and work it in
common; but they were much quicker than the Jamestown folk to perceive
the inexpediency of this plan, and reformed it by giving each man or
family a private plot of ground. Agriculture then developed so rapidly
that corn enough was raised to supply the Indians as well as the
English; and the importation of neat cattle increased the home look as
well as the prosperity of the farms. There was also a valuable trade in
furs, which stimulated an abortive attempt at rivalry. None could
compete with the Pilgrims on their own ground; for were they not
growing up with the country, and the Lord--was He not with them? More
troublesome than this effort of Weston was the obstruction of the
Company in England, and its usurious practices; the colonists finally
bought them out, and relied henceforth wholly on themselves, with the
best results. As years went by their numbers increased, though but
slowly. They did not invite the co-operation of persons not of their
way of thinking, and the world was never over-supplied with
Separatists. On the other hand, they were active and full of
enterprise, and sent out branches in all directions, which shared the
vitality of the parent stock. Every man of them was trained to
self-government, and where he went order and equity accompanied him. A
purer democracy could not be framed; for years the elections were made
by the entire body of the assembled citizens; His Dread Majesty, King
James, never sent them his royal Charter, but the charter provided by
their own love of justice and solid good sense served them far better.
Their governors were responsible directly to the people, and were
further restrained by a council of seven members. This political basis
is that upon which our present form of government rests; but it is
strange to see what Daedalian complications, and wheels within wheels,
we have contrived to work into the superstructure. A modern ward heeler
in New York could have taken up the whole frame of government in
Seventeenth Century New England by the butt end, and cracked it like a
whip--provided of course the Pilgrim fathers had allowed him to attend
the primaries.

But it is more probable that the ward heeler would have found himself
promptly in the presence of one of those terrific magistrates whose
grim decrees gave New England naughty children the nightmare a century
after the stern-browed promulgators of them were dust. The early laws
against crime in New England were severe, though death was seldom or
never inflicted save for murder. But more irksome to one used to the
lax habits of to-day would have been the punctilious rigidity with
which they guarded the personal bearing, speech, and dress of the
members of their community. Yet we may thank them for having done so;
it was a wise precaution; they knew the frailties of the flesh, and how
easily license takes an ell if an inch be given it. Nothing less iron
than was their self-restraint could have provided material stanch
enough to build up the framework of our nation. One might not have
enjoyed living with them; but we may be heartily glad that they lived;
and we should be the better off if more of their stamp were alive still.

But these iron people had their tender and sentimental side as well,
and the self-command which they habitually exercised made the
softening, when it came, the more beautiful. One of the love romances
of this little colony has come down to us, and may be taken as the
substantial truth; it has entered into our literature and poetry, and
touches us more nearly even than the tale of Pocahontas. Its telling by
our most popular poet has brought it to the knowledge of a greater
circle of readers than it could otherwise have reached; but the
elaboration of his treatment could add nothing to the human charm of
it, or sharpen our conception of the leading characters in the drama.
Miles Standish had been a soldier in the Netherlands before joining the
Pilgrims, and to him they gave the military guardianship of the colony,
with the title of captain. He was then about thirty-six years of age, a
bluff, straightforward soldier, whom a life of hardship had made older
than his years. He had known little of women's society, but during the
long voyage he came to love Priscilla Mullens, and when the spring came
to the survivors at Plymouth, he wished to marry her. But he would not
trust, as Othello did, to the simple art of a soldier to woo her; and
Priscilla was probably no Desdemona. But there was a youth among the
colonists, just come of age, whom Standish had liked and befriended,
and who, though a cooper and ship-carpenter by trade, was gifted with
what seemed to Standish especial graces of person and speech. Alden had
not been one of the original pilgrims; he had been hired to repair the
"Mayflower" while she lay at Southampton, and decided to sail on her
when she sailed; perhaps with the hope of making his fortune in the new
world, perhaps because he wished to go where Priscilla went. She was a
girl whom any man might rejoice to make his wife; vigorous and
wholesome as well as comely, and endowed with a strong character,
sweetened by a touch of humor. John had never spoken to her of his
love, any more than Miles had; whether Priscilla's clear eyes had
divined it, we know not; but it is likely that she saw through the
cooper and the soldier both.

The honest soldier was a fool, and saw nothing but Priscilla, and felt
nothing but his love for her. He took John Alden by the arm, and,
leading him apart into the forest, proposed to him to go to young
Mistress Mullens and ask her if she would become the wife of Captain
Standish. Alden was honest, too; but he was dominated by his older
friend, and lacked the courage to tell him that he had hoped for
Priscilla for himself; he let the critical moment for this explanation
pass, and then there was nothing for it but to accept the Captain's
commission. We can imagine how this situation would be handled by the
analytic novelists of our day; how they would spread Alden's heart and
conscience out on paper, and dry them, and pick them to pieces. The
young fellow certainly had a hard thing to do; he must tread down his
own passion, and win the girl for his rival into the bargain. To her he
went, and spoke. But the only way he could spur himself to eloquence
was to imagine that he was Standish, and then woo her as he would have
done had Standish been he.

Maidens of rounded nature, like Priscilla, pay less attention to what a
man says than to the tones of his voice, the look in his eyes, and his
unconscious movements. As Alden warmed to his work, she glanced at him
occasionally, and not only wished that Heaven had made her such a man,
but decided that it had. So, when the youth had finished off an ardent
peroration, in which the Captain was made to appear in a guise of
heroic gallantry that did not suit him in the least, but which was the
best John could do for him: there was a pause, while the vicarious
wooer wiped his brow, and felt very miserable, remembering that if she
yielded, it would be to Miles and not to him. She divined what was in
his mind, and sent him to Heaven with one of the womanliest and
loveliest things that ever woman said to man: "Why don't you speak for
yourself, John?" she asked, gazing straight at him, with a quiver of
her lips that was half humor and half the promise of tears.

John still had before him a bad quarter of an hour with the Captain; it
was as hard to make him understand that he had not played the traitor
to him as it had been to persuade Priscilla to do what she had not
done; but the affair ended without a tragedy, which would have spoiled
it. Captain Standish, when Priscilla married, went to live in Duxbury;
and a year or two later worked off his spleen by slaying the Indian
rascals who were plotting to murder the Weston settlers at Weymouth. He
and his men did not wait for the savages to strike the first blow; they
made no pretense of exhausting all the resources of diplomacy before
proceeding to extremities. They walked up to the enemy, suddenly seized
them by the throat, and drove the knives which the Indians themselves
wore through their false hearts. There was no more trouble from Indians
in that region for a long time; and Captain Standish's feelings were
greatly relieved. As for John and Priscilla, they lived long and
prospered, John attaining the age of eighty-seven, which indicates
domestic felicity. They had issue, and their descendants live among us
to this day in comfort and honor.

King James, like other spiteful and weak men, had a long memory, and
amid the many things that engaged his attention he did not forget the
colonists of Plymouth, who had exiled themselves without a charter from
him. In the same year which witnessed their disembarkation at Plymouth
Rock, he incorporated a company consisting of friends of his own, and
gave them a tract of country between the fortieth and the forty-eighth
parallels of north latitude, which of course included the Plymouth
colony. In addition to all other possible rights and privileges, it had
the monopoly of the fisheries of the coast, and it was from this that
revenue was most certainly expected, since it was proposed to lay a tax
on all tonnage engaged in it. All the new company had to do was to
grant charters to all who might apply, and reap the profits. But the
scheme was fated to miscarry, because the pretense of colonization
behind it was impotent, and the true object in view was the old one of
getting everything that could be secured out of the country, and
putting nothing into it. The fisheries monopoly was powerfully opposed
in Parliament and finally defeated; small sporadic settlements, with no
sound principle or purpose within them, appeared and disappeared along
the coast from Massachusetts to the northern borders of Maine. One
grant conflicted with another, titles were in dispute, and lawsuits
were rife. The king sanctioned whatever injustice or restriction his
company proposed, but his decrees, many of them illegal, were
ineffective, and produced only confusion. Agriculture was hardly
attempted in any of the little settlements authorized by the company,
and the only trade pursued was in furs and fishes. The rights of the
Indians were wholly disregarded, and the domain of the French at the
north was infringed upon. All this while the Pilgrims continued their
industries and maintained their democracy, undisturbed by the feeble
machinations of the king; and in 1625 the death of the latter
temporarily cleared the air. Charles affixed his seal to the famous
Massachusetts Charter four years later; and though Gorges and some
others continued to harass New England for some time longer, the plan
of colonizing by fisheries was hopelessly discredited, and the
development of civil and religious liberties among the serious
colonists was assured.

The experiments thus far made in dealing with the new country had had a
significant result. The Plymouth colony, going out with neither charter
nor patronage, and with the purpose not of finding gold or making
fortunes, but of establishing a home wherein to dwell in
perpetuity--which was handicapped by the abject poverty of its members,
and by the severities of a climate till then unknown--this enterprise
was found to hold the elements of success from the start, and it
steadily increased in power and influence. It suffered from time to
time from the tyranny of royal governors and the ignorance or malice of
absentee statesmanship; but nothing could extinguish or corrupt it; on
the contrary, it went "slowly broadening down, from precedent to
precedent," until, when the moment of supreme trial came to the
Thirteen Colonies, the descendants of the Pilgrims and the Puritans,
and the men who had absorbed their ideas, put New England in the van of
patriotism and progress. It is a noble record, and a pregnant example
to all friends of freedom.

In suggestive contrast with this was the Jamestown enterprise. As we
have seen, this colony was saved from almost immediate extinction
solely by the genius and energy of one man, whom his fellow members had
at first tried to exclude altogether from their councils and
companionship. Belonging to a class socially higher and presumably more
intelligent than the Pilgrims, and continually furnished with supplies
from the Company in England, they were unable during twelve years to
make any independent stand against disaster. In a climate which was as
salubrious as that of New England was rigorous, and with a soil as
fertile as any in the world, they dwindled and starved, and their
dearest wish was to return to England. They were saved at last (as we
shall presently see) by two things; first, by the discovery of the
value of tobacco as an export, and of its usefulness as a currency for
the internal trade of the country; and secondly, and much more, by the
Charter of 1618, which gave the people the privilege of helping to make
their own laws. That year marked the beginning of civil liberty in
America; but what it had taken the Jamestown colonists twelve weary and
disastrous years to attain, was claimed by the pious farmers of
Plymouth before ever they set foot on Forefather's Rock. Willingness to
labor, zeal for the common welfare, indifference to wealth,
independence, moral and religious integrity and fervor--these were some
of the traits and virtues whose cultivation made the Pilgrims
prosperous, and the neglect or lack of which discomfited the Virginia
settlers. The latter, man for man, were by nature as capable as the
former of profiting by right conditions and training; and as soon as
they obtained them they showed favorable results. But in the meantime
the lesson was driven home that a virgin country cannot be subdued and
rendered productive by selfish and unjust procedure: a homely and
hackneyed lesson, but one which can never be too often quoted, since
each fresh generation must buy its own experience, and it often happens
that a situation essentially old assumes a novel aspect, owing to
external modifications of time and place.

The Plymouth Colony, after remaining long separate and self-supporting,
consented to a union with the larger and richer settlements of
Massachusetts. The charter secured by the latter, and the manner in
which it was administered, were alike remarkable. The granting of it
was facilitated by the threatened encroachments of other than
Englishmen upon the New England domain; it was represented to Charles
that it was necessary to be beforehand with these gentry, if they were
to be restrained. Charles was on the verge of that rupture with law and
order in his own realm which culminated in his dismissal of Parliament,
and for ten years attempting the task of governing England without it.
He approved the charter without adequately realizing the full breadth
and pregnancy of its provisions, which, in effect, secured civil and
ecclesiastical emancipation to the settlers under it. But what was
quite as important was the consideration that it went into effect at a
time incomparably favorable to its success. The Plymouth colony had
proved that a godly and self-denying community could flourish in the
wilderness, in the enjoyment of spiritual blessings unattainable at
home. The power of English prelacy did not extend beyond the borders of
England: idolatrous ceremonies could be eschewed in Massachusetts
without fear of persecution. Thousands of Puritans were prepared to
give up their homes for the sake of liberty, and only waited assurance
that it could be obtained. The condition of society and education in
England was vicious and corrupt; and though it might become brave and
true men to suffer persecution in witness of their faith, yet there was
danger that their children might be induced to fall away from the
truth, after they were gone. Martyrdom was well, but it must not be
allowed to such an extreme as to extirpate the proclaimers of the
truth. Many of those who were prepared to take advantage of the charter
were of the best stock in England, men of brains and substance as well
as piety; graduates of the Universities, country gentlemen, men of the
world and of affairs. A colony made of such elements would be a new
thing in the earth; it would comprise all that was strong and wise in
human society, and would exclude every germ of weakness and frailty.
The sealing of the charter was like the touching of the electric button
which, in our day, sets in motion for the first time a vast mechanical
system, or fires a simultaneous salute of guns in a hundred cities.
King Charles I., who was to lose his anointed head on the block because
he tried to crush popular liberty in England, was the immediate human
instrument of giving the purest form of such liberty to English exiles
beyond the sea.

The charter constituted an organization called the Governor and Company
of Massachusetts Bay in New England. The governor, annually elected by
the members, was assisted by a deputy and assistants, and was to call a
business meeting monthly or oftener, and in addition was to preside
four times a year at an assembly of the whole body of the freemen, to
make laws and determine appointments. Freedom of Puritan worship was
assured, in part explicitly, in part tacitly. The king had no direct
relation with their proceedings, beyond the general and vague claims of
royal prerogative; and it was an open question whether Parliament had
the power to override the authority of the patentees.

It will be seen that this charter was in no respect inharmonious with
the system of self-government which had grown up among the Plymouth
colonists; it was a more complete and definite formulation of
principles which must ever be supported by men who wish so to live as
to obtain the highest social and religious welfare. It was the stately
flowering of a seed already obscurely planted, and though it was to be
now and again checked in its development, would finally bear the fruit
of the Tree of Life.



CHAPTER THIRD

THE SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS


Among the characteristic figures of this age, none shows stronger
lineaments than that of John Endicott. He was, at the time of his
coming to Massachusetts, not yet forty years of age; he remained there
till his death at six-and-seventy. He was repeatedly elected governor,
and died in the governor's chair. In 1645 he was made Major-general of
the Colonial troops; nine years before he had headed a campaign against
the Pequot Indians. His character illustrated the full measure of
Puritan sternness; he was an inflexible persecutor of the Quakers, and
was instrumental in causing four of them to be executed in Boston. In
his career is found no feeble passage; he was always Endicott. He was a
man grown before he attained, under the ministrations of Samuel Skelton
of Cambridge, in England, the religious awakening which placed him in
the forefront of the Puritan dissenters of his time; and it may be
surmised that the force of nature which gave him his self-command
would, otherwise directed, have opened still wider the gates of license
and recklessness which marked the conduct of many in that period. But,
having taken his course, he disciplined himself to the strictest
observances, and required them of others. He was a man of perfect moral
and physical courage, austere and choleric; yet there was in him a
certain cheerfulness and kindliness, like sunshine touching the
ruggedness of a granite bowlder. An old portrait of him presents a full
and ruddy countenance, without a beard, and with large eyes which gaze
sternly out upon the beholder. When the Massachusetts Company was
formed, it contained many men of pith and mark, such as Saltonstall,
Bellingham, Eaton, and others; but, by common consent, Endicott was
chosen as the first governor of the new realm, and he sailed for Boston
harbor in June, 1628. He took with him his wife and children, and a
small following of fit companions, and landed in September.

Many tales are told of the doings of Endicott in Massachusetts. Like
those of all strong men, his deeds were often embellished with
legendary ornaments, but the exaggerations, if such there be, are
colored by a true conception of his character. At the time of his
advent, there was at Merrymount, or Mount Walloston, now within the
boundaries of Quincy, near Boston, a colony which was a survival of the
one founded by Thomas Weston, through the agency of Thomas Morton, an
English lawyer, who was more than once brought to book for
unpuritanical conduct. Here was collected, in 1628, a number of waifs
and strays, and other persons, not in sympathy with the rigorous habits
of the Puritans, whose proceedings were of a more or less licentious
and unbecoming quality, calculated to disturb the order and propriety
of the realm. Endicott, on being apprised of their behavior, went
thither with some armed men, and put a summary end to the colony;
Morton was sent back to England, and the "revelries" which he had
countenanced or promoted were seen no more in Massachusetts. The era
for gayeties had not yet come in the new world. Endicott would not be
satisfied with crushing out evil; he would also nip in the bud all such
lightsome and frivolous conduct as might lead those who indulged in it
to forget the dangers and difficulties attending the planting of the
reformed faith in the wilderness.

More impressive yet is the story of how he resented the project of
Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the most zealous supporter of the
follies and iniquities of King Charles, to force the ritual of the
orthodox church upon the people of Massachusetts. When Endicott
received from Governor Winthrop the letter containing this news, whose
purport, it carried out, would undo all that the Puritans had most
passionately labored to establish; for which they had given up their
homes and friends, and to the safe-guarding of which they had pledged
their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor:--he was deeply
stirred, and resolved that a public demonstration should be made of the
irrevocable opposition of the people to the measure. He was at that
time captain of the trained band of Salem, which was used to meet for
drill in the square of the little settlement. It had for a long time
disquieted Endicott and other Puritan leaders that the banner of
England, under which, as Englishmen, they must live and fight, should
bear upon it the sign of the red cross, which was the very emblem of
the popery which their souls abhorred. It had seemed to them almost a
sin to tolerate it; and yet it was treason to take any liberties with
the national ensign. But Endicott was now in a mood to encounter any
risk; since, if Laud's will were enforced, there would be little left
in New England worth fighting for.

Accordingly, on the next training day, when the able men of Salem were
drawn up in their breastplates and headpieces, with the Red-Cross flag
floating over them, and the rest of the townspeople, with here and
there an Indian among them, looking on: Endicott, in his armor, with
his sword upon his thigh, spoke in passionate terms to the assembly of
the matter which weighed upon his heart. And then, as a symbol of the
Puritan protest, and a pledge of his vital sincerity, he took the
banner in his hand, and, drawing his sword, cut the cross out of its
folds. The unparalleled audacity and rashness of this act, which might
have brought upon New England a revocation of her charter and
destruction of the liberties which already exceeded those vouchsafed to
Englishmen at home, alarmed Winthrop, and sent a thrill throughout the
colony. But the deed was too public to be disavowed, and Endicott and
they must abide the consequences. Information of the outrage was
carried to Charles; but he was fortunately too much preoccupied at the
moment with the struggle for his crown at home to be able to take
proper action upon the slight put upon his authority in Salem. No
punishment was inflicted upon the bold soldier, who thus anticipated by
nearly a century and a half the step finally taken by the patriots of
1776.

To return, however, to Endicott's arrival in Boston (as it was
afterward named, in honor of that Lincolnshire Boston from which many
of the emigrants came). There were already a few settlers there, who
had come in from various motives, and one or two of whom were inclined
to assert squatter sovereignty. The rights of the Indians were
respected, in accordance with the injunctions of the Company; and
Sagamore John, who asserted his rights as chief over the neck of land
and the hilly promontory of the present city, was so courteously
entreated that he permitted the erection of a house there, and the
laying out of streets. While these preparations were going forward, the
bulk of the first emigration, numbering two hundred persons, with
servants, cattle, arms and other provisions, entered the harbor. They
had had a prosperous and pious voyage, being much refreshed with
religious services performed daily; and it may be recorded as perhaps a
unique fact in the annals of ocean navigation that the ship captain and
the sailors punctuated the setting of the morning and noon watches with
the singing of psalms and with prayer. This sounds apocryphal; but it
is stated in the narrative of "New England's Plantation," written and
circulated by Mr. Higginson soon after their arrival; and it must be
remembered that the ship carried a supply of personages of the clerical
profession out of proportion to the number of the rest of the
passengers. But palliate the marvel how we may, we cannot help smiling
at it, and at the same time regretting that the Puritans themselves
probably had no realization of the miracle which was transacting under
their noses. They doubtless regarded it as a matter of course, instead
of a thing to occur but once in a precession of the equinoxes.

And now, it might be supposed, began the building of the city: the
clearing of the forest, the chopping of wood, the sawing of beams, the
digging of foundations, the ringing of hammers, and the uprising on
every side of the dwellings of civilization. And certainly steps were
taken to provide the company with shelter from the present summer heats
and from the snows of winter to come; and they had brought with them
artisans skilled to do the necessary work. But though the Puritans
never could be called remiss in respect of making due provision for the
necessities of this life, yet all was done with a view to the
conditions of the life to come; and in the annals of the time we read
more of the prayers and fasts, the choosing of ministers, and the
promotion and practice of godliness in general, than we do of any
temporal matters. Men there were, like Endicott, who united the
strictest religious zeal with all manner of practical abilities; but
there were many, too, who had been no more accustomed to shift for
themselves than were the gentlemen of Jamestown. They differed from the
latter, however, in an enlightened conception of the work before them,
in enthusiasm for the commonweal, and in determination to familiarize
themselves as soon as possible with the requirements of their
situation. The town did not come up in a night, like the shanty cities
of our western pioneers; nor did it contain gambling houses and liquor
saloons as its chief public buildings. These men were building a social
structure meant to last for all time, and houses in which they hoped to
pass the years of their natural lives; and they proceeded with what we
would now consider unwarrantable deliberation and with none too much
technical skill. They sought neither wealth nor the luxuries it brings;
but, rather, welcomed hardship, as apt to chasten the spirit; and never
felt themselves so thoroughly about their proper business as when they
were assembled in the foursquare little log hut which they had
consecrated as the house of God. Boston and Salem grew: they were
larger and more commodious at the end of the twelvemonth than they had
been at its beginning; but more cannot be said. Sickness, misfortune,
and scarcity handicapped the settlers; many died; the yield of their
crops was wholly inadequate to their needs; servants whose work was
indispensable could not be paid, and were set free to work for
themselves, and the outlook was in all respects gloomy. If the
enterprise was to be saved, the Lord must speedily send succor.

The Lord did not forget His people. A great relief was already
preparing for them, and the way of it was thus.--

The record of the former chartered companies had shown that conducting
the affairs of colonists on the other side of the ocean was attended
with serious difficulties on both parts. The colonists could not make
their needs known with precision enough, or in season, to have them
adequately met; and the governing company was unable to get a close
knowledge of its business, or to explain and enforce its requirements.
Furthermore, there was liable to be continual vexatious interference on
the part of the king and his officers, detrimental to the welfare of
colonists and company alike.

The men who constituted the Massachusetts Company were not concerned
respecting the pecuniary profits of the venture, inasmuch as they
looked only for the treasures which moth nor rust can corrupt; their
"plantation" was to the glory of God, not to the imbursement of man.
Nor were they anxious to impose their will upon the emigrants, or
solicitous lest the latter should act unseemly; for the men who were
there were of the same character and aim as those who were in England,
and there could be no differences between them beyond such as might
legitimately arise as to the most expedient way of reaching a given
end. But the Company could easily apprehend that the king and his
ministers might meddle with their projects and bring them to naught;
and since those affairs, unlike mercantile ones, were not of a nature
to admit of compromise, they earnestly desired to prevent this
contingency.

Debating the matter among themselves, the leaders of the organization
conceived the idea of establishing the headquarters of the Company in
the midst of the emigrants in America: of becoming, in other words,
emigrants themselves, and working side by side with their brethren for
the common good. This plan offered manifest attractions; it would
remove them from unwelcome propinquity to the Court, would be of great
assistance to the work to do which the Company was formed, would give
them the satisfaction of feeling that they were giving their hands as
well as their hearts to the service of God, and, not least, would give
notice to all the Puritans in England, now a great and influential
body, that America was the most suitable ground for their earthly
sojourning.

These considerations determined them; and it remained only to put the
plan into execution. Twelve men of wealth and education, eminent among
whom was John Winthrop, the future governor of the little commonwealth,
met and exchanged solemn vows that, if the transference could legally
be accomplished, they would personally voyage to New England and take
up their permanent residence there. The question was shortly after put
to the general vote, and unanimously agreed to; a commercial
corporation (as ostensibly the Company was) created itself the germ of
an independent commonwealth; and on October 20th John Winthrop was
chosen governor for the ensuing twelvemonth; money was subscribed to
defray expenses; as speedily as possible ships were chartered or
purchased; the numbers of the members of the Company were increased,
and their resources augmented, by the addition of many outside persons
in harmony with the movement, and willing to support it with their
fortunes and themselves; and by the early spring of 1630 a fleet of no
less than seventeen ships, accommodating nearly a thousand emigrants
representing the very best blood and brain of England, was ready to
sail.

At the moment of departing, there was a quailing of the spirit on the
part of some of the emigrants; but Winthrop comforted them; he told
them that they must "keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of
peace"; that, in the wilderness, they would see more of God than they
could in England; and that their plantation should be of such a quality
as that the founders of future plantations should pray that "The Lord
make it likely that of New England." These were good words.
Nevertheless, there were not a few seceders, and it was not till the
year had advanced that the full number of vessels found their way to
the port of Boston. But eleven ships, including the Arbella which bore
Winthrop, sailed at once, with seven hundred men and women, and every
appliance that experience and forethought could suggest for the
convenience and furtherance of life in a new country. Their going made
a deep impression throughout England.

And well it might! For these people were not unknown and rude, like the
Plymouth Pilgrims; they were not fiercely intolerant fanatics, whose
sincerity might be respected, but whose company must be irksome to all
less extreme than themselves. They were of gentle blood and training;
persons whose acquaintance was a privilege; who added to the richness
and charm of social life. That people of this kind should remove
themselves to the wilderness meant much more, to the average mind, than
that religious outcasts like the Pilgrims should do so. For the latter,
one place might be as good as another; but that the others should give
up their homes and traditions for the hardships and isolation of such
an existence seemed incomprehensible; and when no other motive could be
found than that which they professed--"the honor of God"--grave
thoughts could not but be awakened. The sensation was somewhat the same
as if, in our day, a hundred thousand of the most favorably known and
highly endowed persons in the country were to remove to Chinese Tartary
to escape from the corruption and frivolity of business and social
life, and to create an ideal community in the desert. We could smile at
such a hegira if Tom, Dick and Harry were concerned in it; but if the
men and women of light and leading abandon us, the implied indictment
is worth heeding.

The personal character and nature of Winthrop are well known, and may
serve as a type for the milder aspect of his companions. He was of a
gentle and conciliating temper, affectionate, and prizing the affection
of others. There was a certain sweetness about him, a tendency to mild
joyousness, a desire to harmonize all conflicts, a disposition to think
good, that good might come of it. He was indisposed to violence in
opinion as much as in act; he believed that love was the fulfilling of
the law, and would dissolve opposition to the law, if it were allowed
time and opportunity. His cultivated intellect recognized a certain
inevitableness, or preordained growth in mortal affairs, which made him
sympathetic even toward those who differed from him, for did they not
use the best light they had? He conformed to the English church, and
yet he absented himself from England, not being willing to condemn the
orthodox ritual, yet feeling that the Gospel in its purity could be
more intimately enjoyed in America. He was no believer in the theory of
democratic equality; it seemed to him contrary to natural order; there
were degrees and gradations in all things, men included; there were
those fitted to govern, and those fitted to serve; power should be in
the hands of the few, but they should be "the wisest of the best." He
had no doubts as to the obligations of loyalty to the King, and yet he
gave up home and ease to live where the King was a sentiment rather
than a fact. But beneath all this engaging softness there was strength
in Winthrop; the fiber of him was fine, but it was of resolute temper.
Simple goodness is one of the mightiest of powers, and he was good in
all simplicity. He could help his servants in the humblest household
drudgery, and yet preserve the dignity befitting the Governor of the
people. He was not a man to be bullied or terrified, but his wisdom and
forbearance disarmed an enemy, and thus removed all need of fighting
him. He dominated those around him spontaneously and involuntarily;
they, as it were, insisted upon being led by him, and commanded him to
exact their obedience. His influence was purifying, encouraging,
uplifting, and upon the whole conservative; had he lived a hundred
years later, he would not have been found by the side of Adams, Patrick
Henry, and James Otis. Sympathy and courtesy made him seem yielding;
yet, like a tree that bends to the breeze, he still maintained his
place, and was less changeable than many whose stubbornness did not
prevent their drifting. His insight and intelligence may have enabled
him to foresee to what a goal the New England settlers were bound; but
though he would have sympathized with them, he would not have been
swayed to join them. As it was, he wrought only good to them, for they
were in the formative stage, when moderation helps instead of
hindering. He mediated between the state they were approaching, and
that from which they came, and he died before the need of alienating
himself from them arrived. His resoluteness was shown in his resistance
to Anne Hutchinson and her supporter, Sir Harry Vane, who professed the
heresy that faith absolved from obedience to the moral law; they were
forced to quit the colony; and so was Roger Williams, as lovely as and
in some respects a loftier character than Winthrop. In reviewing the
career of this distinguished and engaging man, we are surprised that he
should have found it on his conscience to leave England. Endicott was
born to subdue the wilderness, and so was many another of the Puritans;
but it seems as if Winthrop might have done and said in King Charles's
palace all that he did and said in Massachusetts, without offense. But
it is probable that his moderation appears greater in the primitive
environment than it would have done in the civilized one; and again,
the impulse to restrain others from excess may have made him incline
more than he would otherwise have done toward the other side.

But tradition has too much disposed us to think of the Puritans as of
men who had thrown aside all human tenderness and sympathy, and were
sternly and gloomily preoccupied with the darker features of religion
exclusively. Winthrop corrects this judgment; he was a Puritan, though
he was sunny and gentle; and there were many others who more or less
resembled him. The reason that the somber type is the better known is
partly because of its greater picturesqueness and singularity, and
partly because the early life of New England was on the whole militant
and aggressive, and therefore brought the rigid and positive qualities
more prominently forward.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the piety of the dominating powers
in Massachusetts during the first years of the colony's existence. It
was almost a mysticism. That intimate and incommunicable experience
which is sometimes called "getting religion"--the Lord knocking at the
door of the heart and being admitted--was made the condition of
admission to the responsible offices of government. This was to make
God the ruler, through instruments chosen by Himself--theoretically a
perfect arrangement, but in practice open to the gravest perils. It not
merely paved the way to imposture, but invited it; and the most
dangerous imposture is that which imposes on the impostor himself. It
created an oligarchy of the most insidious and unassailable type: a
communion of earthly "saints," who might be, and occasionally were,
satans at heart. It is essentially at variance with democracy, which it
regards as a surrender to the selfish license of the lowest range of
unregenerate human nature; and yet it is incompatible with hereditary
monarchy, because the latter is based on uninspired or mechanical
selection. The writings of Cotton Mather exhibit the peculiarities and
inconsistencies of Puritanism in the most favorable and translucent
light, for Mather was himself wedded to them, and of a most
inexhaustible fertility in their exposition.

Winthrop was responsible for the "Oath of Fidelity," which required its
taker to suffer no attempt to change or alter the government contrary
to its laws; and for the law excluding from the freedom of the body
politic all who were not members of its church communion. The people,
however, stipulated that the elections should be annual, and each town
chose two representatives to attend the court of assistants. But having
thus asserted their privileges, they forbore to interfere with the
judgment of their leaders, and maintained them in office. The possible
hostility of England, the strangeness and dangers of their surroundings
in America, and the appalling prevalence of disease and mortality among
them, possibly drove them to a more than normal fervor of piety. Since
God was so manifestly their only sword and shield, and was reputed to
be so terrible and implacable in His resentments, it behooved them to
omit no means of conciliating His favor.

Winthrop found anything but a land flowing with milk and honey, when he
arrived at Salem, where the ships first touched. As when, twenty years
before, Delaware came to Jamestown, the people were on the verge of
starvation, and it was necessary to send a vessel back to England for
supplies. There were acute suffering and scarcity all along the New
England coast, and though the spirit of resignation was there, it
seemed likely that there would be soon little flesh left through which
to manifest it. The physical conditions were intolerable. The hovels in
which the people were living were wretched structures of rough logs,
roofed with straw, with wooden chimneys and narrow and darksome
interiors. They were patched with bark and rags; many were glad to
lodge themselves in tents devised of fragments of drapery hung on a
framework of boughs. The settlement was in that transition state
between crude wilderness and pioneer town, when the appearance is most
repulsive and disheartening. There is no order, uniformity, or
intelligent procedure. There is a clump of trees of the primeval forest
here, the stumps and litter of a half-made clearing there, yonder a
patch of soil newly and clumsily planted; wigwams and huts alternate
with one another; men are digging, hewing, running to head back
straying cattle, toiling in with fragments of game on their shoulders;
yonder a grave is being dug in the root-encumbered ground, and hard by
a knot of mourners are preparing the corpse for interment. There is no
rest or comfort anywhere for eye or heart. The only approximately
decent dwelling in Salem at this time was that of John Endicott.
Higginson was dying of a fever. Lady Arbella, who had accompanied her
husband, Isaac Johnson, had been ailing on the voyage, and lingered
here but a little while before finding a grave. In a few months two
hundred persons perished. It was no place for weaklings--or for
evil-doers either; among the earliest of the established institutions
were the stocks and the whipping-post, and they were not allowed to
stand idle.

Winthrop and most of the others soon moved on down the coast toward
Boston. It had been the original intention to keep the emigrants in one
body, but that was found impracticable; they were forced to divide up
into small parties, who settled where they best could, over an area of
fifty or a hundred miles. Nantasket, Watertown, Charlestown, Saugus,
Lynn, Maiden, Roxbury, all had their handfuls of inhabitants. It was
exile within exile; for miles meant something in these times. More than
a hundred of the emigrants, cowed by the prospect, deserted the cause
and returned to England. Yet Winthrop and the other leaders did not
lose heart, and their courage and tranquillity strengthened the others.
It is evidence of the indomitable spirit of these people that one of
their first acts was to observe a day of fasting and prayer; a few days
later the members of the congregation met and chose their pastor, John
Wilson, and organized the first Church of Boston. They did not wait to
build the house of God, but met beneath the trees, or gathered round a
rock which might serve the preacher as a pulpit. There was simplicity
enough to satisfy the most conscientious. "We here enjoy God and Jesus
Christ," wrote Winthrop: "I do not repent my coming: I never had more
content of mind."

After a year there were but a thousand settlers in Massachusetts. Among
them was Roger Williams, a man so pure and true as of himself to hallow
the colony; but it is illustrative of the intolerance which was from
the first inseparable from Puritanism, that he was driven away because
he held conscience to be the only infallible guide. We cannot blame the
Puritans; they had paid a high price for their faith, and they could
not but guard it jealously. Their greatest peril seemed to them to be
dissension or disagreements on points of belief; except they held
together, their whole cause was lost. Williams was no less an exile for
conscience' sake than they; but as he persisted in having a conscience
strictly his own, instead of pooling it with that of the church, they
were constrained to let him go. They did not perceive, then or
afterward, that such action argued feeble faith. They could not, after
all, quite trust God to take care of His own; they dared not believe
that He could reveal Himself to others as well as to them; they feared
to admit that they could have less than the whole truth in their
keeping. So they banished, whipped, pilloried, and finally even hanged
dissenters from their dissent. We, whose religious tolerance is perhaps
as excessive as theirs was deficient, are slow to excuse them for this;
but they believed they were fighting for much more than their lives;
and as for faith in God, it is surely no worse to fall into error
regarding it than to dismiss it altogether.

In a community where the integrity of the church was the main subject
of concern, it could not be long before religious conservatism would be
reflected in the political field. Representative government was
conceded in theory; but in practice, Winthrop and others thought that
it would be better ignored; the people could not easily meet for
deliberations, and how could their affairs be in better hands than
those of the saints, who already had charge of them? But the people
declined to surrender their liberties; there should be rotation in
office; voting should be by ballot instead of show of hands. Taxation
was restricted; and in 1635 there was agitation for a written
constitution; and the relative authority of the deputies and the
assistants was in debate. Our national predisposition to "talk
politics" had already been born.

Among these early inconsistencies and disagreements Roger Williams
stood out as the sole fearless and logical figure. Consistency and
bravery were far from being his only good qualities; in drawing his
portrait, the difficulty is to find shadows with which to set off the
lights of his character. The Puritans feared the world, and even their
own constancy; Williams feared nothing; but he would reverence and obey
his conscience as the voice of God in his breast, before which all
other voices must be hushed. He was not only in advance of his time: he
was abreast of any times; nothing has ever been added to or detracted
from his argument. When John Adams wrote to his son, John Quincy Adams,
"Your conscience is the Minister Plenipotentiary of God Almighty placed
in your breast: see to it that this minister never negotiates in vain,"
he did but attire in the diplomatic phraseology which came naturally to
him the thought which Williams had avouched and lived more than a
century before. Though absolutely radical, Williams was never an
extremist; he simply went to the fountain-head of reason and truth, and
let the living waters flow whither they might. The toleration which he
demanded he always gave; of those who had most evilly entreated him he
said, "I did ever from my soul honor and love them, even when their
judgment led them to afflict me." His long life was one of the most
unalloyed triumphs of unaided truth and charity that our history
records; and the State which he founded presented, during his lifetime,
the nearest approach to the true Utopia which has thus far been
produced.

Roger Williams was a Welshman, born in 1600, and dying, in the
community which he had created, eighty-five years later. His school was
the famous Charterhouse; his University, Cambridge; and he took orders
in the Church of England. But the protests of the Puritans came to his
ears before he was well installed; and he examined and meditated upon
them with all the quiet power of his serene and penetrating mind. It
was not long before he saw that truth lay with the dissenting party;
and, like Emerson long afterward, he at once left the communion in
which he had thought to spend his life. He came to Massachusetts in
1631, and, as we have seen, was not long in discovering that he was
more Puritan than the Puritans. When differences arose, he departed to
the Plymouth Colony, and there abode for several useful years.

But though the men of Boston and Salem feared him, they loved him and
recognized his ability; indeed, they never could rid themselves of an
uneasy sense that in all their quarrels it was he who had the best of
the argument; they were often reduced to pleading necessity or
expediency, when he replied with plain truth. He responded to an
invitation to return to Salem, in 1633, by a willing acceptance; but no
sooner had he arrived than a discussion began which continued until he
was for the second and final time banished in 1636. The main bone of
contention was the right of the church to interfere in state matters.
He opposed theocracy as profaning the holy peace of the temple with the
warring of civil parties. The Massachusetts magistrates were all church
members, which Williams declared to be as unreasonable as to make the
selection of a pilot or a physician depend upon his proficiency in
theology. He would not admit the warrant of magistrates to compel
attendance at public worship; it was a violation of natural right, and
an incitement to hypocrisy. "But the ship must have a pilot," objected
the magistrates, "And he holds her to her course without bringing his
crew to prayer in irons," was Williams's rejoinder. "We must protect
our people from corruption and punish heresy," said they. "Conscience
in the individual can never become public property; and you, as public
trustees, can own no spiritual powers," answered he. "May we not
restrain the church from apostasy?" they asked. He replied, "No: the
common peace and liberty depend upon the removal of the yoke of
soul-oppression."

The magistrates were perplexed, and doubtful what to do. Laud in
England was menacing them with episcopacy, and they, as a preparation
for resistance, decreed that all freemen must take an oath of
allegiance to Massachusetts instead of to the King. Williams, of
course, abhorred episcopacy as much as they did; but he would not
concede the right to impose a compulsory oath. A deputation of
ministers was sent to Salem to argue with him: he responded by
counseling them to admonish the magistrates of their injustice. He was
cited to appear before the state representatives to recant; he
appeared, but only to affirm that he was ready to accept banishment or
death sooner than be false to his convictions. Sentence of banishment
was thereupon passed against him, but he was allowed till the ensuing
spring to depart; meanwhile, however, the infection of his opinions
spreading in Salem, a warrant was sent to summon him to embark for
England; but he, anticipating this step, was already on his way through
the winter woods southward.

The pure wine of his doctrine was too potent for the iron-headed
Puritans. But it was their fears rather than their hearts that
dismissed him; those who best knew him praised him most unreservedly;
and even Cotton Mather admitted that he seemed "to have the root of the
matter in him."

Williams's journey through the pathless snows and frosts of an
exceptionally severe winter is one of the picturesque and impressive
episodes of the times. During more than three months he pursued his
lonely and perilous way; hollow trees were a welcome shelter; he lacked
fire, food and guides. But he had always pleaded in behalf of the
Indians; he had on one occasion denied the validity of a royal grant
unless it were countersigned by native proprietors; and during his
residence in Plymouth he had learned the Indian language. All this now
stood him in good stead. The man who was outcast from the society of
his white brethren, because his soul was purer and stronger than
theirs, was received and ministered unto by the savages; he knew their
ways, was familiar in their wigwams, championed their rights, wrestled
lovingly with their errors, mediated in their quarrels, and was
idolized by them as was no other of his race. Pokanoket, Massasoit and
Canonicus were his hosts and guardians during the winter and spring;
and in summer he descended the river in a birch-bark canoe to the site
of the present city of Providence, so named by him in recognition of
the Divine mercies; and there he pitched his tent beside the spring,
hoping to make the place "a shelter for persons distressed for
conscience."

His desire was amply fulfilled. The chiefs of the Narragansetts deeded
him a large tract of land; oppressed persons locked to him for comfort
and succor, and never in vain; a republic grew up based on liberty of
conscience, and the civil rule of the majority: the first in the world.
Orthodoxy and heresy were on the same footing before him; he trusted
truth to conquer error without aid of force. Though he ultimately
withdrew from all churches, he founded the first Baptist church in the
new world; he twice visited England, and obtained a charter for his
colony in 1644. Williams from first to last sat on the Opposition Bench
of life; and we say of him that he was hardly used by those who should
most have honored him. Yet it is probable that he would have found less
opportunity to do good at either an earlier or a later time. Critics so
keen and unrelenting as he never find favor with the ruling powers; he
would have been at least as "impossible" in the Nineteenth Century as
he was in the Seventeenth; and we would have had no Rhode Island to
give him. We can derive more benefit from his arraignment of society
two hundred and fifty years ago than we should were he to call us to
account to-day, because no resentment mingles with our intellectual
appreciation: our withers seem to be unwrung. The crucifixions of a
former age are always denounced by those who, if the martyr fell into
their hands, would be the first to nail him to the cross.

But the Puritanism of Williams, and that of those who banished him,
were as two branches proceeding from a single stem; their differences,
which were the type of those that created two parties in the community,
were the inevitable result of the opposition between the practical and
the theoretic temperaments. This opposition is organic; it is
irreconcilable, but nevertheless wholesome; both sides possess versions
of the same truth, and the perfect state arises from the contribution
made by both to the common good--not from their amalgamation, or from a
compromise between them, Williams's community was successful, but it
was successful, on the lines he laid down, only during its minority; as
its population increased, civil order was assured by a tacit abatement
of the right of individual independence, and by the insensible
subordination of particular to general interests. In Massachusetts, on
the other hand, which from the first inclined to the practical
view--which recognized the dangers surrounding an organization weak in
physical resources, but strong in spiritual conviction, and which, by
reason of the radical nature of those convictions, was specially liable
to interference from the settled power of orthodoxy:--in Massachusetts
there was a diplomatic tendency in the work of building up the
commonwealth. The integrity of Williams's logic was conceded, but to
follow it out to its legitimate conclusions was deemed inconsistent
with the welfare and continuance of the popular institutions. The
condemnation of dissenters from dissent sounded unjust; but it was the
alternative to the more far-reaching injustice of suffering the
structure which had been erected with such pains and sacrifice to fall
to pieces just when it was attaining form and character. The time for
universal toleration might come later, when the vigor and solidity of
the nucleus could no longer be vitiated by fanciful and transient
vagaries. The right of private judgment carried no guarantee comparable
with that which attached to the sober and tested convictions of the
harmonious body of responsible citizens.

When, therefore, the young Henry Vane, coming to Boston with the
prestige of aristocratic birth and the reputation of liberal opinions,
was elected Governor in 1635, and presently laid down the principle
that "Ishmael shall dwell in the presence of his brethren," he at once
met with opposition; and he and Anne Hutchinson, and other visionaries
and enthusiasts, were made to feel that Boston was no place for them.
Yet at the same time there was a conflict between the body of the
freemen and the magistrates as to the limits and embodiments of the
governing power; the magistrates contended that there were manifest
practical advantages in life appointments to office, and in the
undisturbed domination of men of approved good life and intellectual
ability; the people replied that all that might be true, but they would
still insist upon electing and dismissing whom they pleased. Thus was
inadvertently demonstrated the invincible security of democratic
principles; the masses are always willing to agree that the best shall
rule, but insist that they, the multitude, and not any Star Chamber, no
matter how impeccable, shall decide who the best are. Herein alone is
safety. The masses, of course, are not actuated by motives higher than
those of the select few; but their impartiality cannot but be greater,
because, assuming that each voter has in view his personal welfare,
their ballots must insure the welfare of the majority. And if the
welfare of the majority be God's will, then the truth of the old Latin
maxim, Vox Populi vox Dei, is vindicated without any recourse to
mysticism. The only genuine Aristocracy, or Rule of the Best, must in
other words be the creation not of their own will and judgment, but of
those of the subjects of their administration.

The political experiments and vicissitudes of these early times are of
vastly greater historical importance than are such external episodes,
as, for example, the Pequot war in 1637. A whole tribe was
exterminated, and thereby, and still more by the heroic action of
Williams in preventing, by his personal intercession, an alliance
between the Pequots and the Narragansetts, the white colonies were
preserved. But beyond this, the affair has no bearing upon the
development of the American idea. During these first decades, the most
profound questions of national statesmanship were discussed in the
assemblies of the Massachusetts Puritans, with an acumen and wisdom
which have never been surpassed. The equity and solidity of most of
their conclusions are extraordinary; the intellectual ability of the
councilors being purged and exalted by their ardent religious faith.
The "Body of Liberties," written out in 1641 by Nathaniel Ward, handles
the entire subject of popular government in a masterly manner. It was a
Counsel of Perfection molded, by understanding of the prevailing
conditions, into practical form. The basis of its provisions was the
primitive one which is traced back to the time when the Anglo-Saxon
tribes met to choose their chiefs or to decide on war or other matters
of general concern. It was the basis suggested by nature; for, as the
chief historian of these times has remarked, freedom is spontaneous,
but the artificial distinctions of rank are the growth of centuries.
Lands, according to this instrument, were free and alienable; the
freemen of a corporation held them, but claimed no right of
distribution. There should be no monopolies: no wife-beating: no
slavery "Except voluntary": ministers as well as magistrates should be
chosen by popular vote. Authority was given to approved customs; the
various towns or settlements constituting the commonwealth were each a
living political organism. No combination of churches should control
any one church:--such were some of the provisions. The colonies were
availing themselves of the unique opportunity afforded by their
emancipation, in the wilderness, from the tyranny and obstruction of
old-world traditions and licensed abuses.

By the increasing body of their brethren in England, meanwhile, New
England was looked upon as a sort of New Jerusalem, and letters from
the leaders were passed from hand to hand like messages from saints. Up
to the time when Charles and Laud were checked by Parliament, the tide
of emigration set so strongly toward the American shores that measures
were taken by the King to arrest it; by 1638, there were in New England
more than twenty-one thousand colonists. The rise of the power of
Parliament stopped the influx; but the succeeding twenty years of peace
gave the much-needed chance for quiet and well-considered growth and
development. The singular prudence and foresight of Winthrop and others
in authority, during this interregnum, was showed by their declining to
accept certain apparent advantages proffered them in love and good
faith by their English friends. A new patent was offered them in place
of their royal charter; but the colonists perceived that the reign of
Parliament was destined to be temporary, and wisely refused. Other
suggestions, likely to lead to future entanglements, were rejected;
among them, a proposition from Cromwell that they should all come over
and occupy Ireland. This is as curious as that other alleged incident
of Cromwell and Hampden having been stopped by Laud when they had
embarked for New England, and being forced to remain in the country
which soon after owed to them its freedom from kingly and episcopal
tyranny.

Material prosperity began to show itself in the new country, now that
the first metaphysical problems were in the way of settlement. In Salem
they were building ships, cotton was manufactured in Boston; the export
trade in furs and other commodities was brisk and profitable. The
English Parliament passed a law exempting them from taxes. After so
much adversity, fortune was sending them a gleam of sunshine, and they
were making their hay. But something of the arrogance of prosperity
must also be accredited to them; the Puritans were never more bigoted
and intolerant than now. The persecution of the Quakers is a blot on
their fame, only surpassed by the witchcraft cruelties of the
concluding years of the century. Mary Dyar, and the men Robinson,
Stephenson and Leddra were executed for no greater crime than obtruding
their unwelcome opinions, and outraging the propriety of the community.
The fate of Christison hung for a while in the balance; he was not less
guilty than the others, and he defied his judges; he told them that
where they murdered one, ten others would arise in his place; the same
words that had been heard many a time in England, when the Puritans
themselves were on their trial. Nevertheless the judges passed the
sentence of death; but the people were disturbed by such bloody
proceedings, and Christison was finally set free. It must not be
forgotten that the Quakers of this period were very different from
those who afterward populated the City of Brotherly Love under Penn.
They were fanatics of the most extravagant and incorrigible sort;
loud-mouthed, frantic and disorderly; and instead of observing modesty
in their garb, their women not seldom ran naked through the streets of
horrified Boston, in broad daylight. They thirsted for persecution as
ordinary persons do for wealth or fame, and would not be satisfied till
they had provoked punishment. The granite wall of Puritanism seemed to
exist especially for them to dash themselves against it. Such persons
can hardly be deemed sane; and it is of not the slightest importance
what particular creed they profess. They are opposed to authority and
order because they are authority and order; in our day, we group such
folk under the name, Anarchists; but, instead of hanging them as the
Puritans did, we let them froth and threaten, according to the policy
of Roger Williams, until the lack of echoes leads them to hold their
peace.

Although slavery, or perpetual servitude, was forbidden by the statute,
there were many slaves in New England, Indians and whites as well as
negroes. The first importation of the latter was in 1619, by the Dutch,
it is said. No slave could be kept in bondage more than ten years; it
was stipulated that they were to be brought from Africa, or elsewhere,
only with their own consent; and when, in 1638, it appeared that a
cargo of them had been forcibly introduced, they were sent back to
Africa. Prisoners of war were condemned to servitude; and, altogether,
the feeling on the subject of human bondage appears to have been both
less and more fastidious than it afterward became. There was no such
indifference as was shown in the Southern slave trade two centuries
later, nor was there any of the humanitarian fanaticism exhibited by
the extreme Abolitionists of the years before the Civil War. It may
turn out that the attitude of the Puritans had more common-sense in it
than had either of the others.

The great event of 1643 was the natural outcome of the growth and
expansion of the previous time. It was the federation of the four
colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut.
Connecticut had been settled in 1680, but it was not till six years
afterward that a party headed by the renowned Thomas Hooker, the "Son
of Thunder," and one of the most judicious men of that age, journeyed
from Boston with the deliberate purpose of creating another
commonwealth in the desert. Connecticut did not offer assurances of a
peaceful settlement; the Indians were numerous there, and not
well-disposed; and in the south, the Dutch of New Amsterdam were
complaining of an infringement of boundaries. These ominous conditions
came to a head in the Pequot war; after which peace reigned for many
years. A constitution of the most liberal kind was created by the
settlers, some of the articles of which led to a correspondence between
Hooker and Winthrop as to the comparative merits of magisterial and
popular governments. Unlearned men, however religious, if elected to
office, must needs call in the assistance of the learned ministers,
who, thus burdened with matters not rightly within their function,
might err in counseling thereon. Of the people, the best part was
always the least, and of that best, the wiser is the lesser.--This was
Winthrop's position. Hooker replied that to allow discretion to the
judge was the way to tyranny. Seek the law at its mouth; it is free
from passion, and should rule the rulers themselves; let the judge do
according to the sentence of the law. In high matters, business should
be done by a general council, chosen by all, as was the practice of the
Jewish and other well-ordered states.--This is an example of the
political discussions of that day in New England; both parties to it
concerned solely to come at the truth, and free from any selfish aim or
pride. The soundness of Hooker's view may be deduced from the fact that
the constitution of Connecticut (which differed in no essential respect
from those of the other colonies) has survived almost unchanged to the
present day. Statesmanship, during two and a half centuries, has
multiplied details and improved the nicety of adjustments; but it has
not discerned any principles which had not been seen with perfect
distinctness by the clear and venerable eyes of the Puritan fathers.

Eaton, another man of similar caliber, was the leading spirit in the
New Haven settlement, assisted by the Reverend Mr. Davenport; many of
the colonists were Second-Adventists, and they called the Bible their
Statute-Book. The date of their establishment was 1638. The incoherent
population of Rhode Island caused it to be excluded from the
federation; but Williams, journeying to London, obtained a patent from
the exiled but now powerful Vane, and took as the motto of his
government, "Amor Vincet Omnia." New Hampshire, which had been united
to Massachusetts in 1641, could have no separate part in the new
arrangement; and Maine, an indeterminate region, sparsely inhabited by
people who had come to seek not God, but fish in the western world, was
not considered. The articles of federation of the four Calvinist
colonies aimed to provide mutual protection against the Indians,
against possible encroachment from England, against Dutch and French
colonists: they declared a league not only for defense and offense, but
for the promotion of spiritual truth and liberty. Nothing was altered
in the constitutions of any of the contracting parties; and an
equitable system of apportioning expenses was devised. Each partner
sent two delegates to the common council; all affairs proper to the
federation were determined by a three-fourths vote; a law for the
delivery of fugitive slaves was agreed to; and the commissioners of the
other jurisdictions were empowered to coerce any member of the
federation which should break this contract. The title of The United
Colonies of New England was bestowed upon the alliance. The articles
were the work of a committee of the leading men in the country, such as
Winthrop, Winslow, Haynes and Eaton; and the confederacy lasted forty
years, being dissolved in 1684.

It was a great result from an experiment begun only about a dozen years
before. It was greater even, than its outward seeming, for it contained
within itself the forces which should control the future. This country
is made up of many elements, and has been molded to no small extent by
circumstances hardly to be foreseen; but it seems incontestable that it
would never have endured, and continued to be the goal of all pilgrims
who wish to escape from a restricted to a freer life, had not its
corner-stone been laid, and its outline fixed, by these first colonists
of New England. It has been calculated that in two hundred years the
physical increase of each Puritan family was one thousand persons,
dispersed over the territory of the United States; and the moral
influence which this posterity exerted on the various communities in
which they fixed their abode is beyond computation. But had the Puritan
fathers been as ordinary men: had they come hither for ends of gain and
aggrandizement: had they not been united by the most inviolable ties
that can bind men--community in religious faith, brotherhood in
persecution for conscience' sake, and an intense, inflexible enthusiasm
for liberty--their descendants would have had no spiritual inheritance
to disseminate. Many superficial changes have come upon our society;
there is an absence of a fixed national type; there are many thousands
of illiterate persons among us, and of those who are still ignorant of
the true nature of democratic institutions; all the tongues of Europe
and of other parts of the world may be heard within our boundaries;
there are great bodies of our citizens who selfishly pursue ends of
private enrichment and power, indifferent to the patent fact that
multitudes of their fellows are thereby obstructed in the effort to
earn a livelihood in this most productive country in the world; there
are many who have prostituted the name of statesmanship to the
gratification of petty and transient ambitions: and many more who,
relieved by the thrift of their ancestors from the necessity to win
their bread, have renounced all concern in the welfare of the state,
and live trivial and empty lives: all this, and more, may be conceded.
But such evil humors, be it repeated, are superficial, attesting the
vigor, rather than the decay, of the central vitality. America still
stands for an idea; there is in it an immortal soul. It was by the
Puritans of Massachusetts Bay that this soul was implanted; to inspire
it was their work. They experienced the realities, they touched the
core of things, us few men have ever done; for they were born in an age
when the world was awakening from the spiritual slumber of more than
fifteen hundred years, and upon its bewildered eyes was breaking the
splendor of a great new light. The Puritans were the immediate heirs of
the Reformation (so called; it might more truly have been named the New
Incarnation, since the outward modifications of visible form were but
the symptoms of a freshly-communicated informing intelligence). It
transfigured them; from men sunk in the gross and sensual thoughts and
aims of an irreligious and priest-ridden age--an age which ate and
drank and slept and fought, and kissed the feet of popes, and maundered
of the divine right of kings--from this sluggish degradation it roused
and transfigured the Englishmen who came to be known as Puritans. It
was a transfiguration, though its subjects were the uncouth, almost
grotesque figures which chronicle and tradition have made familiar to
us. For a people who were what the Puritans were before Puritanism,
cannot be changed by the Holy Ghost into angels of light; their
stubborn carnality will not evaporate like a mist; it clings to them,
and being now so discordant with the impulse within, an awkwardness and
uncouthness result, which suggest some strange hybrid: to the eye and
ear, they are unlovelier and harsher than they were before their
illumination; but Providence regards not looks; it knew what it was
about when it chose these men of bone and sinew to carry out its
purposes. Once enlisted, they never could be quelled, or seduced, or
deceived, or wearied; they were in fatal earnest, and faithful unto
death, for they believed that God was their Captain. They had got a
soul; they put it into their work, and it is in that work even to this
day.

It does not manifestly appear to our contemporary vision; it is
overloaded with the rubbish of things, as a Greek statue is covered
with the careless debris of ages; but, as the art of the sculptor is
vindicated when the debris has been removed, so will the fair
proportions of the State conceived by the Puritans, and nourished and
defended by their sons, declare themselves when in the maturity of our
growth we have assimilated what is good in our accretions, and
disencumbered ourselves of what is vain. It is the American principle,
and it will not down; it is a solvent of all foreign substances; in its
own way and time it dissipates all things that are not harmonious with
itself. No lesser or feebler principle would have survived the tests to
which this has been subjected; but this is indestructible; even we
could not destroy it if we would, for it is no inalienable possession
of our own, but a gift from on High to the whole of mankind. But let us
piously and proudly remember that it was through the Puritans that the
gift was made. Other nations than the English have contributed to our
substance and prosperity, and have yielded their best blood to flow in
our veins. They are dear to us as ourselves, as how should they not be,
since what, other than ourselves, are they? None the less is it true
that what was worthiest and most unselfish in the impulse that drove
them hither was a reflection of the same impulse that actuated the
Puritans when America was not the most powerful of republics, but a
wilderness. None of us all can escape from their greatness--from the
debt we owe them: not because they were Englishmen, not because they
made New England; but because they were men, inspired of God to make
the earth free that was in bondage.



CHAPTER FOURTH

FROM HUDSON TO STUYVESANT


There are two scenes in the career of Henry Hudson which can never be
forgotten by Americans. One is in the first week in September, 1609. A
little vessel, of eighty tons, is lying on the smooth waters of a large
harbor. She has the mounded stern and bluff bows of the ships of that
day; one of her masts has evidently been lately stepped; the North
American pine of which it is made shows the marks of the
ship-carpenter's ax, and the whiteness of the fresh wood. The square
sails have been rent, and mended with seams and patches; the sides and
bulwarks of the vessel have been buffeted by heavy seas off the
Newfoundland coast; the paint and varnish which shone on them as she
dropped down the reaches of the Zuyder Zee from Amsterdam, five months
ago, have become whitened with salt and dulled by fog and sun and
driving spray. Across her stern, above the rudder of massive oaken
plank clamped with iron, is painted the name "HALF MOON," in straggling
letters. On her poop stands Henry Hudson, leaning against the tiller;
beside him is a young man, his son; along the bulwark lounge the crew,
half Englishmen, half Dutch; broad-beamed, salted tars, with pigtails
and rugged visages, who are at home in Arctic fields and in Equatorial
suns, and who now stare out toward the low shores to the north and
west, and converse among themselves in the nameless jargon--the rude
compromise between guttural Dutch, and husky English--which has served
them as a medium of communication during the long voyage. It is a good
harbor, they think, and a likely country. They are impatient for the
skipper to let them go ashore, and find out what grows in the woods.

Meanwhile the great navigator, supporting himself, with folded arms,
against the creaking tiller, absorbs the scene through his deep-set
eyes in silence. Many a haven had he visited in his time; he had been
within ten degrees of the North Pole; he had seen the cliffs of
Spitzbergen loom through the fog, and had heard the sound of Greenland
glaciers breaking into vast icebergs where they overhung the sea; he
had lain in the thronged ports of the Netherlands, where the masts
cluster like naked forests, and the commerce of the world seethes and
murmurs continually; he had dropped anchor in quiet English harbors,
under cool gray skies, with undulating English hills in the distance,
and prosperous wharfs and busy streets in front. He had sweltered, no
doubt, beneath the heights of Hong-Kong, amid a city of swarming junks;
and further south had smelled the breeze that blows through the straits
of the Spice Islands. He knew the surface of the earth, as a farmer
knows his farm; but never, he thought, had he beheld a softer and more
inviting prospect than this which spread before him now, mellowed by
the haze of the mild September morning.

On all sides the shores were wooded to the water's edge: a giant
forest, unbroken, dense and tall, flourishing from its own immemorial
decay, matted with wild grape vine, choked with brush, wild as when the
Creator made it; untouched, since then. It was as remote--as lost to
mankind--as it was beautiful. The hum and turmoil of the civilized
world was like the memory of a dream in this tranquil region, where
untrammeled nature had worked her teeming will for centuries upon
silent centuries. Here were such peace and stillness that the cry of
the blue jay seemed audacious; the dive of a gull into the smooth water
was a startling event. To the imaginative mind of Hudson this spot
seemed to have been set apart by Providence, hidden away behind the
sandy reaches of the outer coast, so that irreverent man, who turns all
things to gain, might never discover and profane its august solitudes.
Here the search for wealth was never to penetrate; the only gold was in
the tender sunshine, and in the foliage of here and there a giant tree,
which the distant approach of winter was lulling into golden slumber.
But then, with a sigh, he reflected that all the earth was man's, and
the fullness thereof; and that here too, perhaps, would one day appear
clearings in the primeval forest, and other vessels would ride at
anchor, and huts would peep out from beneath the overshadowing foliage
on the shores. But it was hard to conjure up such a picture; it was
difficult to imagine so untamed a wilderness subdued, in ever so small
a degree, by the hand of industry and commerce.

Northwestward, across the green miles of whispering leaves, the land
appeared to rise in long, level bluffs, still thronged with serried
trees; a great arm of the sea, a mile or two in breadth, extended east
of north, and thither, the mariner dreamed, might lie the long-sought
pathway to the Indies. A tongue of land, broadening as it receded, and
swelling in low undulations, divided this wide strait from a narrower
one more to the east. All was forest; and eastward still was more
forest, stretching seaward. Southward, the land was low--almost as low
and flat as the Netherlands themselves; an unexplored immensity, whose
fertile soil had for countless ages been hidden from the sun by the
impervious shelter of interlacing boughs. No--never had Hudson seen a
land of such enduring charm and measureless promise as this: and here,
in this citadel of loneliness, which no white man's foot had ever trod,
which, till then, only the eyes of the corsair Verrazano had seen, near
a century before--here was to arise, like Aladdin's Palace, the
metropolis of the western world; enormous, roaring, hurrying,
trafficking, grasping, swarming with its millions upon millions of
striving, sleepless, dauntless, exulting, despairing, aspiring human
souls; the home of unbridled luxury, of abysmal poverty, of gigantic
industries, of insolent idleness, of genius, of learning, of happiness
and of misery; of far-reaching enterprise, of political glory and
shame, of science and art; here human life was to reach its intensest,
most breathless, relentless and insatiable expression; here was to
stand a city whose arms should reach westward over a continent, and
eastward round the world; here were to thunder the streets and tower
the buildings and reek the chimneys and arch the bridges and rumble the
railways and throb the electric wires of American New York, the supreme
product of Nineteenth Century civilization, radiant with the virtues
and grimy with the failings that mankind has up to this time developed.

On the 23d of June, two years later, Henry Hudson was the central
figure in another scene. He sat in a small, open boat, hoary with
frozen spray; he was muffled in the shaggy hide of a white bear,
roughly fashioned into a coat; a sailor's oilskin hat was drawn down
over his brow, and beneath its rim his eyes gazed sternly out over a
wide turbulence of gray waters, tossing with masses of broken ice. His
dark beard was grizzled with frost; his cheeks were gaunt with the
privations of a long, arctic winter spent amid endless snows, in
darkness unrelieved, smitten by storms, struggling with savage beasts
and harried by more inhuman men. He sat with his hand at the helm;
against his other shoulder leaned his son, his inseparable companion,
now sinking into unconsciousness; the six rowers--the stanch comrades
who, with him, had been thrust forth to perish by the mutineers--plied
their work heavily and hopelessly; their rigid jaws were set; no words
nor complaints broke from them, though was slowly settling round their
valiant hearts. Overhead brooded a somber vault of clouds; the circle
of the horizon, which seemed to creep in upon them, was one unbroken
sweep of icy dreariness, save where, to the southeast, the dark hull of
the "Discovery," and her pallid sails, rocked and leaned across the
sullen heave of the waters. She was bound for Europe; but whither is
Hudson bound?

His end befitted his life; he vanished into the unknown, as he had come
from it. There is no record of the time or place of his birth, or of
his early career, nor can any tell where lie his bones; we only know
that his limbs were made in England, and that the great inland sea,
called after him, ebbs and flows above his grave. He first comes into
the ken of history, sailing on the seas, resolute to discover virgin
straits and shores; and when we see him last, he is still toiling
onward over the waves, peering into the great mystery. Possibly, as has
been suggested, he may have been the descendant of the Hudson who was
one of the founders of the Muscovy Company, in whose service the famous
navigator afterward voyaged on various errands. It matters not; he
lived, and did his work, and is no more; his strong heart burned within
him; he saw what none had seen; he triumphed, and he was overcome. But
the doubt that shrouds his end has given him to legend, and the thunder
that rolls brokenly among the dark crags and ravines of the Catskills
brings his name to the hearer's lips.

The Dutch had had many opportunities offered to them to discover New
York, before they accepted the services of Henry Hudson, who was
willing to go out of his own country to find backers, so only that he
might be afloat. Almost every year, from 1581 onward, the mariners of
the Netherlands strove, by east and by west, to pass the barrier that
America interposed between them and the Eastern trade they coveted. The
Dutch East India Company was the first trading corporation of Europe;
and after the war with Spain, during the twelve years' truce, the
little country was overflowing with men eager to undertake any
enterprise, and with money to fit them out. The Netherlands suddenly
bloomed out the most prosperous country in the world.

They would not be hurried; they took their time to think it over, as
Dutchmen will; but at length they conceived an immense project for
acquiring all the trade, or the best part of it, of both the West and
the East. They studied the subject with the patient particularity of
their race; they outclassed Spain on the seas, and they believed they
could starve out her commerce. Some there were, however, who feared
that in finding new countries they would lose their own; Europe was
again in a turmoil, and they were again fighting Spain before New
Amsterdam was founded. But meanwhile, in 1609, quite inadvertently,
Henry Hudson discovered it for them at a moment when they supposed him
to be battling with freezing billows somewhere north of Siberia. When
he was stopped by Nova Zembla ice, he put about and crossed the
Atlantic to Nova Scotia, and so down the coast, as we have seen, to the
Chesapeake, the Delaware, and finally the Hudson. He told his tale in
glowing words when he got back; but the Dutch merchants perhaps fancied
he was spinning sailors' yarns, and heeded not his report till long
after.

Hudson, after passing the Narrows, anchored near the Jersey shore, and
received a visit from some Indians with native commodities to exchange
for knives and beads. They presented the usual Indian aspect as
regarded dress and arms; but they wore ornaments of red copper under
their feather mantles, and carried pipes of copper and clay. They were
affable, but untrustworthy, stealing what they could lay their hands
on, and a few days later shooting arrows at a boatload of seamen from
the ship, and killing one John Colman. Hudson went ashore, and was
honored with dances and chants; upon the whole, the impression mutually
created seems to have been favorable. An abundance of beans and oysters
was supplied to the crew; and no doubt trade was carried on to the
latter's advantage; we know that years afterward the whole of Manhattan
Island was purchased of its owners for four-and-twenty dollars. The
present inhabitants of New York City could not be so easily overreached.

Hudson now began the first trip ever made by white men up the great
river. How many millions have made it since! But he, at this gentlest
time of year, won with the magic not only of what he saw, but of the
unknown that lay before him--what must have been his sensations! As
reach after reach of the incomparable panorama spread itself out
quietly before him, with its beauty of color, its majesty of form, its
broad gleam of placid current, the sheer lift of its brown cliffs, its
mighty headlands setting their titanic shoulders across his path, its
toppling pinnacles assuming the likeness of giant visages, its swampy
meadows and inlets, lovely with flowers and waving with rushes, its
royal eagles stemming the pure air aloft, its fish leaping in the
ripples--and then, as he sailed on, mute with enchantment, the blue
magnificence of the mountains soaring heavenward and melting into the
clouds that hung about their summits--as all this multifarious beauty
unfolded itself, Hudson may well have thought that the lost Eden of the
earth was found at last. And ere long, he dreamed, the vast walls
through which the river moved would diverge and cease, like another
Pillars of Hercules, and his ship would emerge into another ocean. It
was verily a voyage to be remembered; and perhaps it returned in a
vision to his dimming eyes, that day he steered his open boat through
the arctic surges of Hudson's Bay.

For ten days or more he pressed onward before a southerly breeze,
until, in the neighborhood of what now is Albany, it became evident
that the Pacific was not to be found in northern New York. He turned,
therefore, and drifted slowly downward with the steady current, while
the matchless lines of the American autumn glowed every day more
sumptuously from the far-billowing woods. What sunrises and what
sunsets dyed the waters with liquid splendor: what moons, let us hope,
turned the glories of day into the spiritual mysteries of fairyland!
Hudson was not born for repose; his fate was to sail unrestingly till
he died; but as he passed down through this serene carnival of opulent
nature, he may well have wished that here, after all voyages were done,
his lot might finally be cast; he may well have wondered whether any
race would be born so great and noble as to merit the gift of such a
river and such a land.

He landed at various places on the way, and was always civilly and
hospitably welcomed by the red men, who brought him their wild
abundance, and took in return what he chose to give. The marvelous
richness of the vegetation, and the vegetable decay of ages, had
rendered the margins of the stream as deadly as they were lovely; fever
lurked in every glade and bower, and serpents whose bite was death
basked in the sun or crept among the rocks. All was as it had always
been; the red men, living in the midst of nature, were a part of nature
themselves; nothing was changed by their presence; they altered not the
flutter of a leaf or the posture of a stone, but stole in and out
noiseless and lithe, and left behind them no trace of their passage. It
is not so with the white man: before him, nature flies and perishes; he
clothes the earth in the thoughts of his own mind, cast in forms of
matter, and contemplates them with pride; but when he dies, another
comes, and refashions the materials to suit himself. So one follows
another, and nothing endures that man has made; for this is his
destiny. And at length, when the last man has dressed out his dolls and
built his little edifice of stones and sticks, and is gone: nature, who
was not dead, but sleeping, awakes, and resumes her ancient throne, and
her eternal works declare themselves once more; and she dissolves the
bones in the grave, and the grave itself vanishes, with its record of
what man had been. What says our poet?--

  "How am I theirs,
   When they hold not me,
   But I hold them?"

In 1613, or thereabout, Christianson and Block visited the harbor and
got furs, and also a couple of Indian boys to show the burghers of
Amsterdam, since they could not fetch the great river to Holland. In
1614 they went again with five ships--the "Fortune of Amsterdam," the
"Fortune of Hoorn," and the "Tiger of Amsterdam" (which was burned),
and two others. Block built himself a boat of sixteen tons, and
explored the Sound, and the New England coast as far as Massachusetts
Bay; touched at the island known by his name, and forgathered with the
Indian tribes all along his route. The explorers were granted a charter
in the same year, giving them a three years' monopoly of the trade, and
in this charter the title New Netherland is bestowed upon the region.
The Dutch were at last bestirring themselves. Two years after, Schouten
of Hoorn saw the southernmost point of Tierra del Fuego, and gave it
the name of his home port as he swept by; and three other Netherlanders
penetrated to the wilds of Philadelphia that was to be. A fortified
trading post was built at Albany, where now legislation instead of
peltries is the subject of barter. At this juncture internal quarrels
in the Dutch government led to tragic events, which stimulated plans of
western colonization, and the desire to start a commonwealth on Hudson
River to forestall the English--for the latter as well as the Dutch and
Spanish claimed everything in sight. The Dutch East India Company began
business in 1621 with a twenty-four year charter, renewable. It was
given power to create an independent nation; the world was invited to
buy its stock, and the States-General invested a million guilders in
it. Its field was the entire west coast of Africa, and the east coast
of North and South America. Such schemes are of planetary magnificence;
but of all this realm, the Dutch now hold the little garden patch of
Dutch Guiana only, and the pleasant records of their sojourn on
Manhattan Island between the years 1623 and 1664.

Indeed, the Dutch episode in our history is in all respects refreshing
and agreeable; the burghers set us an example of thrift and steadiness
too good for us to follow it; and they deeded to us some of our best
citizens, and most engaging architectural traditions. But it is not
after all for these and other material benefits that we are indebted to
them; we thank them still more for being what they were (and could not
help being): for their character, their temperament, their costume,
their habits, their breadth of beam, their length of pipes, the
deliberation of their courtships, the hardness of their bargains, the
portentousness of their tea-parties, the industrious decorum of their
women, the dignity of their patroons, the strictness of their social
conduct, the soundness of their education, the stoutness of their
independence, the excellence of their good sense, the simplicity of
their prudence, and above all, for the wooden leg of Peter Stuyvesant.
In a word, the humorous perception of the American people has made a
pet of the Dutch tradition in New York and Pennsylvania; as, likewise,
of the childlike comicalities of the plantation negro; the arch
waggishness of the Irish emigrants, and the cherubic shrewdness of the
newly-acquired German. The Dutch gained much, on the sentimental score,
by transplantation; their old-world flavor and rich coloring are
admirably relieved against the background of unbaked wilderness. We
could not like them so much or laugh at them at all, did we not so
thoroughly respect them; the men of New Amsterdam were worthy of their
national history, which recounts as stirring a struggle as was ever
made by the love of liberty against the foul lust of oppression. The
Dutch are not funny anywhere but in Seventeenth Century Manhattan; nor
can this singularity be explained by saying that Washington Irving made
them so. It inheres in the situation; and the delightful chronicles of
Diedrich Knickerbocker owe half their enduring fascination to their
sterling veracity--the veracity which is faithful to the spirit and
gambols only with the letter. The humor of that work lies in its
sympathetic and creative insight quite as much as in the broad
good-humor and imaginative whimsicality with which the author handles
his theme. The caricature of a true artist gives a better likeness than
any photograph.

The first ship containing families of colonists went out early in 1623,
under the command of Cornelis May; he broke ground on Manhattan, while
Joris built Fort Orange at Albany, and a little group of settlers
squatted round it. May acted as director for the first year or two; the
trade in furs was prosecuted, and the first Dutch-American baby was
born at Fort Orange.

Fortune was kind. King Charles, instead of discussing prior rights,
offered an alliance; at home, the bickerings of sects were healed.
Peter Minuit came out as director-general and paid his twenty-four
dollars for the Island--a little less than a thousand acres for a
dollar. At all events, the Indians seemed satisfied from Albany to the
Narrows. The Battery was designed, and there was quite a cluster of
houses on the clearing back of it. An atmosphere of Dutch homeliness
began to temper the thin American air. The honest citizens were pious,
and had texts read to them on Sundays; but they did not torture their
consciences with spiritual self-questionings like the English Puritans,
nor dream of disciplining or banishing any of their number for the
better heavenly security of the rest. The souls of these Netherlander
fitted their bodies far better than was the case with the colonists of
Boston and Salem. Instead of starving and rending them, their religion
made them happy and comfortable. Instead of settling the ultimate
principles of theology and government, they enjoyed the consciousness
of mutual good-will, and took things as they came. The new world needed
men of both kinds. It must, however, be admitted that the people of New
Amsterdam were not wholly harmonious with those of Plymouth. Minuit and
Bradford had some correspondence, in which, while professions of mutual
esteem and love were exchanged, uneasy things were let fall about clear
titles and prior rights. Minuit was resolute for his side, and the
attitude of Bradford prompted him to send for a company of soldiers
from home. But there was probably no serious anticipation of coming to
blows on either part. There was space enough in the continent for the
two hundred and seventy inhabitants of New Amsterdam and for the
Pilgrim Fathers, for the present.

Spain was an unwilling contributor to the prosperity of the Dutch
colonists, by the large profits which the latter gained from the
capture of Spanish galleons; but in 1629 the charter creating the order
of Patroons laid the foundation for abuses and discontent which
afflicted the settlers for full thirty years. Upon the face of it, the
charter was liberal, and promised good results; but it made the mistake
of not securing popular liberties. The Netherlands were no doubt a free
country, as freedom was at that day understood in Europe; but this
freedom did not involve independence for the individual. The only
recognized individuality was that of the municipalities, the rulers of
which were not chosen by popular franchise. This system answered well
enough in the old home, but proved unsuited to the conditions of
settlers in the wilderness. The American spirit seemed to lurk like
some subtle contagion in the remotest recesses of the forest, and those
who went to live there became affected with it. It was longer in
successfully vindicating itself than in New England, because it was not
stimulated on the banks of the Hudson by the New England religious
fervor; it was supported on grounds of practical expediency merely. Men
could not prosper unless they received the rewards of industry, and
were permitted to order their private affairs in a manner to make their
labor pay. They were not content to have the Patroon devour their
profits, leaving them enough only for a bare subsistence. The Dutch
families scattered throughout the domain could not get ahead, while yet
they could not help feeling that the bounty of nature ought to benefit
those whose toil made it available, at least as much as it did those
who toiled not, but simply owned the land in virtue of some documentary
transaction with the powers above, and therefore claimed ownership also
over the poor emigrant who settled on it--having nowhere else to go.
The emigrants were probably helped to comprehend and formulate their
own misfortunes by communications with stragglers from New England, who
regaled them with tales of such liberties as they had never before
imagined. But the seed thus sown by the Englishmen fell on fruitful
soil, and the crop was reaped in due season.

The charter intended, primarily, the encouragement of emigration, and
did not realize that it needed very little encouragement. The
advantages offered were more alluring than they need have been. Any
person who, within four years, could establish a colony of fifty
persons, was given privileges only comparable to those of independent
princes. They were allowed to take up tracts of land many square miles
in area, to govern them absolutely (according to the laws of the
realm), to found and administer cities, and in a word to drink from
Baucis's pitcher to their hearts' content. In return, the home
administration expected the benefit of their trade. Two stipulations
only restrained them: they were to buy titles to their land from the
Indians, and they were to permit, on penalty of removal, no cotton or
woolen manufactures in the country. That was a monopoly which was
reserved to the weavers in the old country.

This was excellent for such as could afford to become patroons; but
what about the others? The charter provided that any emigrant who could
pay for his exportation might take up what land he required for his
needs, and cultivate it independently. Other emigrants, unable to pay
their fare out, might have it paid for them, but in that case, of
course, incurred a mortgage to their benefactors. In effect, they could
not own the product of the work of their hands, until it had paid their
sponsors for their outlay, together with such additions in the way of
interest on capital as might seem to the sponsors equitable.

The Company further undertook to supply slaves to the colony, should
they prove to be a paying investment; and it was chiefly because the
climate of New York was less favorable to the Guinea Coast negro than
was that further south, that African slavery did not take early and
firm root in the former region. Philosophers have long recognized the
influence of degrees of latitude upon human morality. The patroon
planters could dispense with black slaves, since they had white men
enough who cost them no more than their keep, and would, presumably,
not involve the expense of overseers. Everything, therefore, seemed
harmonious and sunshiny, and the Company congratulated itself.

But the patroons, through their agents, began buying up all the land
that was worth having, and found it easy to evade the stipulation
restricting them to sixteen miles apiece. One of them had an estate
running twenty-four miles on either bank of the Hudson, below Albany
(or Fort Orange as it was then), and forty-eight miles inland. It was
superb; but it was as far as possible from being democracy; and the
portly Van Rensselaer of Rennselaerwyck would have shuddered to his
marrow, could he have cast a prophetic eye into the Nineteenth Century.

The Company at home presently discovered that its incautious liberality
had injured its own interests, as well as those of poor settlers; for
the estates of the patroons covered the trading posts where the Indians
came to traffic, and all the profits from the latter swelled the
pockets of the patroons. But the charter could not be withdrawn; the
directors must be content with whatever sympathetic benefits might be
conferred by the increasing wealth of the colony. The patroons were
becoming more powerful than their creators, and took things more and
more into their own lordly hands. Neither patroons nor Company
concerned themselves about the people. The charter had, indeed,
mentioned the subjects of schools and religious instructors for the
emigrants, but had made no provision for the maintenance of such; and
the patroons conceived that such luxuries were deserving of but the
slightest encouragement. The more a poor man knows, the less contented
is he. Such was the argument then, and it is occasionally heard to-day,
when our trusts and corporations are annoyed by the complaints and
disaffections of their only half ignorant employés.

Governor Minuit was not held to be the best man in the world for his
position, and he was recalled in 1632, and Wouter Van Twiller, who
possessed all of his predecessor's faults and none of his virtues, took
his place. A governor with the American idea in him would have saved
Manhattan a great deal of trouble, and perhaps have enabled the Dutch
to keep their hold upon it; but no such governor was available, and
worse than Van Twiller was yet to come. A colony had already been
planted in Delaware, but unjust dealings with the Indians led to a
massacre which left nothing of the Cape Henlopen settlement but bones
and charred timbers. The English to the south were led to renew the
assertion of their never-abandoned claim to the region; there were
encroachments by the English settlers on the Connecticut boundary, and
the Dutch, deprived by the wars in Europe of the support of their
countrymen at home, were too feeble to do more than protest. But
protests from those unable to enforce them have never been listened to
with favor--not even by the English. Besides, the Dutch, though
amenable to religious observances, were far from making them the soul
and end of all thought and action; and this lack of aggressive
religious fiber put them at a decided political disadvantage with their
rivals. Man for man, they were the equals of the English, or of any
other people; as they magnificently demonstrated, forty years
afterward, by defeating allied and evil-minded Europe in its attempt to
expunge them as a nation. But the indomitable spirit of Van Tromp and
De Ruyter was never awakened in the New Netherlands; commercial
considerations were paramount; and though the Dutch settlers remained,
and were always welcome, the colony finally passed from the
jurisdiction of their own government, with their own expressed consent.

Van Twiller vanished after eight years' mismanagement, and the
sanguinary Kieft took the reins. But before his incumbency, Sweden, at
the instance of Gustavus Adolphus, and by the agency of his chancellor
Oxenstiern, both men of the first class, lodged a colony on Delaware
Bay, which subsisted for seventeen years, and was absorbed, at last,
without one stain upon its fair record. Minuit, being out of a job,
offered his experienced services in bringing the emigrating Swedes and
Finns to their new abode, and they began their sojourn in 1638. They
were industrious, peaceable, religious and moral, and they declared
against any form of slavery. They threw out a branch toward
Philadelphia. But Gustavus Adolphus had died at Luetzen before the
Swedes came over, and Queen Christina had not the ability to carry out
his ideas, even had she possessed the power. The Dutch began to dispute
the rights of the Scandinavians; Rysingh took their fort Casimir in
1654, and Peter Stuyvesant with six hundred men received their
submission in the same year. But this success was of no benefit to the
Dutch; the tyrannous monopolies which the Company tried to establish in
Delaware, instead of creating revenues, caused the country to be
deserted by the settlers, who betook themselves to the less oppressive
English administrations to the southward; and it was not until the
English took possession of both Delaware and the rest of the New
Netherlands that it began to yield a fair return on the investment.

But we must return to the ill-omened Kieft. It was upon the Indian
question that he made shipwreck, not only incurring their deadly
enmity, but alienating from himself the sympathies and support of his
own countrymen. The Algonquin tribe, which inhabited the surrounding
country, had been constantly overreached in their trade with the
Dutchmen; the principle upon which barter was carried on with the
untutored savage being, "I'll take the turkey, and you keep the
buzzard: or you take the buzzard, and I'll keep the turkey." This
sounded fair; but when the Indian came to examine his assets, it always
appeared that a buzzard was all he could make of it. Partly, perhaps,
by way of softening the asperities of such a discovery, the Dutch
merchant had been wont to furnish his victim with brandy (not
eleemosynary, of course); but the results were disastrous. The Indians,
transported by the alcohol beyond the anything-but-restricted bounds
which nature had imposed upon them, felt the insult of the buzzard more
keenly than ever, and signified their resentment in ways consistent
with their instincts and traditions. In 1640 an army of them fell upon
the colony in Staten Island, and slaughtered them, man, woman and
child, with the familiar Indian accessories of tomahawk, scalping-knife
and torch. The Staten Islanders, it should be stated, had done nothing
to merit this treatment; but Indian logic interprets the legal maxim
"Qui facit per alium, facit per se," as meaning that if one white man
cheats him, he can get his satisfaction out of the next one who happens
in sight. Staten Island was a definite and convenient area, and when
its population had been exterminated, the Indians could feel relieved
from their obligation. Not long afterward an incident such as romancers
love to feign actually took place; an Indian brave who, as a child
years before, had seen his uncle robbed and slain, and had vowed
revenge, now having become of age, or otherwise qualified himself for
the enterprise, went upon the warpath, and returned with the
long-coveted scalp at his girdle. Evidently the time had come for
Governor Kieft to assert himself.

It was of small avail to invade the wilds of New Jersey, or to offer
rewards for Raritans, dead or alive. The sachems were willing to
express their regret, but they would not surrender the culprits, and
declared that the Dutchmen's own brandy was the really guilty party.
Kieft would not concede the point, and the situation was strained. At
this juncture, the unexpected happened. The Mohawks, a kingly tribe of
red men, who claimed all Northeast America from the St. Lawrence to the
Delaware, and who had already driven the Algonquins before them like
chaff, sent down a war party from northern New York, and demanded
tribute from them. There were more Algonquins than there were Mohawks;
but one eagle counts for more than many kites. The kites came
fluttering to Fort Orange for protection: not so much that they feared
death or torture, but they were overawed by the spirit of the Mohawk,
and could not endure to face him. Kieft fancied that he saw his
opportunity. He would teach the red scoundrels a lesson they would
remember. There was a company of soldiers in the Fort, and in the river
were moored some vessels with crews of Dutch privateers on board. Kieft
made up his party, and when night had fallen he sent them on their
bloody errand, guided by one who knew all the camps and hiding-places
of the doomed tribe. It was a revolting episode; a hundred Indians were
unresistingly murdered. They would have made a stronger defense had
they not been under the impression that it was the Mohawks who were
upon them; and to be killed by a Mohawk was no more than an Algonquin
should expect. But when it transpired that the Dutch were the
perpetrators, the whole nation gave way to a double exasperation:
first, that their friends had been killed, and secondly that they had
suffered under a misapprehension. The settlers, in disregard of advice,
were living in scattered situations over a large territory, and they
were all in danger, and defenseless, even if New Amsterdam itself could
escape. Kieft was heartily cursed by all impartially; he was compelled
to make overtures for peace, and a pow-wow was held in Rockaway woods,
in the spring of 1643. Terms were agreed upon, and, according to Indian
usage, gifts were exchanged. But those of the chiefs so far exceeded in
value the offerings of Kieft that these were regarded as a fresh
insult; war was declared, and dragged along for two years more. It was
not until 1645 that the grand meeting of the settlers and the Five
Nations took place at Fort Amsterdam, and the treaty of lasting peace
was ratified. Kieft sailed from New Amsterdam with the consciousness of
having injured his countrymen more than had any enemy; but he was
drowned off the Welsh coast, without having brought forth fruits meet
for repentance.

Peter Stuyvesant is a favorite character in our history because he was
a manly and straightforward man, faithful to his employers, fearless in
doing and saying what he thought was right, and endowed with a full
share of obstinate, homely, kindly human nature. He was not in advance
of his age, or superior to his training; he was the plain product of
both, but free from selfishness, malice, and unworthy ambitions. He was
born in 1602, and came to America a warrior from honorable wars, seamed
and knotty, with a famous wooden leg which all New Yorkers, at any rate
love to hear stumping down the corridors of time. His administration,
the last of the Dutch regime, wiped out the stains inflicted by his
predecessors, and resisted with equal energy encroachments from abroad
and innovations at home. He was a true Dutchman, with most of the
limitations and all the virtues of his race; fond of peace and of
dwelling in his own "Bowery," yet not afraid to fight when he deemed
that his duty. His tenure of office lasted from 1647 till 1664, a
period of seventeen active years; after the English took possession of
the town and called it New York, Peter went back to Holland, unwilling
to live in the presence of new things; but he found that, at the age of
sixty-three, he could not be happy away from the home that he had made
for himself in the new world; so he returned to Manhattan Island, and
completed the tale of his eighty years on the farm which is now the
most populous and democratic of New York's thoroughfares. There he
smoked his long-stemmed pipe and drank his schnapps, and thought over
old times, and criticised the new. After two and a half centuries, the
memory of him is undimmed; and it is to be wished that some fitting
memorial of him may be erected in the city which his presence honored.

The very next year after his arrival, free trade was established in New
Amsterdam. There had been a strict monopoly till then; but in one way
or another it was continually evaded, and the New Amsterdam merchants
found themselves so much handicapped by the restrictions, that their
inability reacted upon the managers at home. There were not at that
time any infant industries in need of protection, and the colony was
large and capacious enough to take what the mother country sent it, and
more also. But in order to prevent loss, an export duty was enforced,
which pressed lightly on those who paid it, and comforted those to whom
it was paid. Commerce was greatly stimulated, and the merchants of old
Amsterdam sent compliments and prophesies of future greatness to their
brethren across the sea. Every new-hatched settlement that springs up
on the borders of the wilderness is liable to be "hailed" by its
promoters as destined to become the Queen City of its region; the wish
fathers the word, and the word is an advertisement. But the merchant
princes of Amsterdam spoke by the card; they perceived the almost
unique advantages of geographical position and local facilities of
their American namesake; with such a bay and water front, with such a
river, with such a soil and such openings for trade, what might it not
become! Yes: but--"Sic vos noa vobis aedificatis!" The English reaped
what the Dutch had sown, and New York inherits the glory and power
predicted for New Amsterdam.

The soil of Manhattan Island being comparatively poor, the place was
destined to be used as a residence merely, and the houses of prosperous
traders and burghers began to assemble and bear likeness to a town. The
primeval forest still clothed the upper part of the island; but the
visible presence of a municipality in the southern extremity prompted
the inhabitants to suggest a remodeling of the government somewhat
after the New England pattern, where patroons were unknown and
impossible. It is not surprising that suggestions to this effect from
the humbler members of the community were not cordially embraced by
either the patroons or their creators at home; in fact, it was
still-born. That the people should rule themselves was as good as to
say that the horse should loll in the carriage while his master toiled
between the shafts. The thing was impossible, and should be
unmentionable. The people, however, continued to mention it, and even
to neglect paying the taxes which had been imposed with no regard to
their reasonable welfare. A deputation went to Holland to tell the
directors that they could neither farm nor trade with profit unless the
burdens were lightened; the directors thought otherwise, and the
consequence was that devices were practiced to lighten them illicitly.
This added to the interest of life, but subverted the welfare of the
state. Where political rights are not secured to all men by
constitutional right, those who are unable to get them by privilege,
intrigue to steal what such rights would guarantee. At this rate, there
would presently be a Council of Ten and an Inquisition in New
Amsterdam. In 1653, the Governor was constrained to admit the deputies
from the various settlements to an interview, in which they said their
say, and he his. "We have come here at our own expense," they observed,
"from various countries of Europe, expecting to be given protection
while earning our living; we have turned your wilderness into a
fruitful garden for you, and you, in return, impose on us laws which
disable us from profiting by our labor. We ask you to repeal these
laws, allow us to make laws to meet our needs, and appoint none to
office who has not our approbation." Thus, in substance, spoke the
people; and we, at the end of the Nineteenth Century, may think they
were uttering the veriest axioms of political common sense. What sturdy
Peter Stuyvesant thought is perfectly expressed in what he replied.

"The old laws will stand. Directors and council only shall be
law-makers: never will they make themselves responsible to the people.
As to officers of government, were their election left to the rabble,
we should have thieves on horseback and honest men on foot." And with
that, we may imagine, the Governor stamped his wooden toe.

The people shrugged their shoulders. "We aim but at the general good,"
said they. "All men have a natural right to constitute society, and to
assemble to protect their liberties and property."

"I declare this assembly dissolved," Peter retorted. "Assemble again at
your peril! The authority which rules you is derived not from the whim
of a few ignorant malcontents." Alas! the seed of the American Idea had
never germinated in Peter's soldierly bosom; and when the West India
Company learned of the dialogue, they spluttered with indignation. "The
people be d----d." was the sense of their message. "Let them no longer
delude themselves with the fantasy that taxes require their assent."
With that, they dismissed the matter from their minds. Yet even then,
the Writing was on the wall. The flouted people were ripe to welcome
England; and England, in the shape of Charles II., who had come at last
to his own, meditated wiping the Dutch off the Atlantic seaboard. It
availed not to plead rights: Lord Baltimore snapped his fingers.
Lieutenant-governor Beekman, indeed, delayed the appropriation of
Delaware; but Long Island was being swallowed up, and nobody except the
government cared. The people may be incompetent to frame laws: but what
if they decline to fight for you when called upon? If they cannot make
taxes to please themselves, at all events they will not make war to
please anybody else. If they are poor and ignorant, that is not their
fault. The English fleet was impending; what was to be done? Could
Stuyvesant but have multiplied himself into a thousand Stuyvesants, he
knew what he would do; but he was impotent. In August, 1664, here was
the fleet actually anchored in Gravesend Bay, with Nicolls in command.
"What did they want?" the Governor inquired. "Immediate recognition of
English sovereignty," replied Nicolls curtly; and the gentler voice of
Winthrop of Boston was heard, advising surrender. "Surrender would be
reproved at home," said poor Stuyvesant, refusing to know when he was
beaten. He was doing his best to defeat the army and navy of England
single-handed. But the burgomasters went behind him, and capitulated,
and--Peter to the contrary for four days more notwithstanding--New
Amsterdam became New York.

The English courted favor by liberal treatment of their new dependants
on the western shore of the Hudson; whatever the Dutch had refused to
do, they did. The Governor and Council were to be balanced by the
people's representatives; no more arbitrary taxation; citizens might
think and pray as best pleased them; land tenure was made easy, and
seventy-five acres was the bounty for each emigrant imported, negroes
included. By such inducements the wilderness of New Jersey, assigned to
Berkeley and Carteret, was peopled by Scots, New Englanders and
Quakers. Settlement proceeded rapidly, and in 1668 a colonial
legislature met in the town named after Elizabeth Carteret. There were
so many Puritans in the assembly, and their arguments were so
convincing, that New Jersey law bore a strong family resemblance to
that of New England. This had its effect, when, in 1670, the rent
question came up for settlement. The Puritans contended that the
Indians held from Noah, and as they were lawful heirs of the Indians,
they declined to pay rents to the English proprietors. There was no
means of compelling them to do so, and they had their way. The Yankees
were already going ahead.

Manhattan did not get treated quite so well. The Governor had
everything his own way, the council being his creatures, and the
justices his appointees. The people were permitted no voice in affairs,
and might as well have had Stuyvesant back again. After Nicolls had
strutted his term, Lord Lovelace came, and outdid him. His idea of how
to govern was formulated in his instructions to an agent: "Lay such
taxes," said he, "as may give them liberty for no thought but how to
discharge them." Lord Lovelace was an epigrammatist; but in the end he
had to pay for his wit. He attempted to levy a tax for defense, and was
met with refusal; the towns of Long Island had not one cent either for
tribute or defense; his lordship swore at them heartily, but they
heeded him not; and he found himself in the shoes of the ousted Dutch
Governor in an another sense than he desired. And then was poetical
justice made complete; for who should appear before the helpless forts
but Evertsen with a Dutch fleet! New York, New Jersey and Delaware
surrendered to him almost with enthusiasm, and the work of England
seemed to be all undone.

But larger events were to control the lesser. France and England
combined in an iniquitous conspiracy to destroy the Dutch Republic, and
swooped down upon the coast with two hundred thousand men. The story
has often been told how the Dutch, tenfold outnumbered, desperately and
gloriously defended themselves. They finally swept the English from the
seas, and patroled the Channel with a broom at the masthead. By the
terms of the treaty of peace which Charles was obliged by his own
parliament to make, all conquests were mutually restored, and New York
consequently reverted to England. West Jersey was bought by the
Quakers; the eastern half of the province was restored to the rule of
Carteret. The Atlantic coast, from Canada down to Florida,
continuously, was English ground, and so remained until, a century
later, the transplanted spirit of liberty, born in England, threw down
the gauntlet to the spirit of English tyranny, and won independence for
the United States.

When we remember that the Dutch maintained their government in the new
world for little more than fifty years, it is surprising how deep a
mark they made there. It is partly because their story lends itself to
picturesque and graphic treatment; it is so rich in character and
color, and telling in incident. Then, too, it has a beginning, middle
and end, which is what historians as well as romancers love. But most
of all, perhaps, their brief chronicles as a distinct political
phenomenon illustrate the profound problem of self-government in
mankind. The Netherlander had proved, before any of them came hither,
with what inflexible courage they could resent foreign tyranny; and the
municipalities, as well as the nation, had grasped the principles of
independence. But it was not until they erected their little
commonwealth amid the forests of the Hudson that they awakened to the
conception that every man should bear his part in the government of
all. To attain this, it was necessary to break through a crust of
conservatism almost as stubborn as that of Spain. The authority of
their upper classes had never been questioned; the idea had never been
entertained that a citizen in humble life could claim any right to
influence the conditions under which his life should be carried on.
That innate and inalienable right of the individual to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, which Jefferson asserted, and which has
become an axiom to every American school-boy, does not appear, upon
investigation, to be either inalienable or innate. The history of
mankind shows that it has been constantly alienated from them; and if
we pass in review the population of the world, from the oldest to
contemporary times, and from savages tribes to the most highly
civilized nations, we find the plebeian bowing before the patrician,
the poor man serving the wealthy. The conception of human equality
before the law is not a congenital endowment, but an accomplishment,
arduously acquired and easily forfeited. The first impulse of weakness
in the presence of strength is to bow down before it; it is the impulse
of the animal, and of the unspiritual, the unregenerate nature in man.
The ability to recognize the solidarity of man, and therefore the
equality of spiritual manhood, involves an uplifting of the mind, an
illumination of the soul, which can be regarded as the result of
nothing less than a revelation. It is not developed from below--it is
received from above; it is a divine whisper in the ear of fallen man,
transfiguring him, and opening before him the way of life. It
postulates no loss of humility; it does not disturb the truth that some
must serve and some must direct; that some shall have charge over many
things, and some over but few. It does not supersede the outward order
of society. But it affirms that to no man or body of men, no matter how
highly endowed by nature or circumstance with intellect, position or
riches, shall be accorded the right to dispose arbitrarily of the lives
and welfare of the masses. Not elsewhere than in the hands of the
entire community shall be lodged the reins of government. The
administration shall be with the chosen ones whose training and
qualifications fit them for that function; but the principles on which
their administration is conducted shall be determined by the will and
vote of all.

This is not lightly to be believed or understood; Peter Stuyvesant
voiced the unenlightened thought when he said that, should the rabble
rule, order and honesty must be overthrown. This is the inevitable
conclusion of materialistic logic. Like produces like; evil, evil;
ignorance, ignorance. Only by inspired faith will the experiment be
tried of trusting the Creator to manifest His purposes, not by the
conscious wisdom of any man or men, but through the unconscious,
organic tendency, mental and moral, of universal man. We may call it
"the tendency, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness"; or we may
analyze it into the resultant of innumerable forces, taking a direction
independent of them all; or we may say simply that it is the Divine
method of leading us upward; it is all one. Universal suffrage is an
act of faith; and, faithfully carried out, it brings political and
religious emancipation to the people. How far it has been carried out
in this country is a question we shall have to answer hereafter; we may
say here that our forefathers realized its value, and gave to us in our
Constitution the mechanism whereby to practice it. To it they added the
memory of their courage and their sacrifices in its behalf; and more
than this was not theirs to give.

The English Puritans received their revelation in one way; the Dutch
traders and farmers in another; but it was the same revelation. To
neither could it be imparted in Europe, but only in the virgin
solitudes of an untrodden continent. There man, already civilized, was
enabled to perceive the inefficiency and distortion of his
civilization, and to grasp the cure. Hudson, an Englishman, but at the
moment in Dutch service, opened the gates to the Netherlanders, and
thus enabled their emigrants to perfect the work of emancipation which
had been brought to the highest stage it could reach at home. They were
opposed by the directors in Amsterdam, by their own governors and
patroons, and by the errors which immemorial usage had ingrained in
them as individuals. They overcame these forces, not by their own
strength, nor by any violent act of revolution, but by the slow,
irresistible energy of natural law, with which, as with a gravitative
force, they had placed themselves in harmony. Thus they exemplified one
of the several ways in which freedom comes to man, and took their place
as a component element in the limitless cosmopolitanism of our
population.

Their subsequent history shows that nothing truly valuable is lost in
democracy. The high behavior and dignified manners which belonged to
their patroons may be observed among their descendants in contemporary
New York; the men whose ancestors controlled a thousand tenants have
not lost the powers of handling large matters in a large spirit; but
they exercise it now for worthier ends than of old. Similarly, the
Dutch stolidity which amuses us in the chronicles, reappears to-day in
the form of steadiness and judgment; the obstinacy of headstrong Peter,
as self-confidence and perseverance; the physical grossness of the old
burghers, as constitutional vigor. Many of their customs too have come
down to us; their heavy afternoon teas are recalled in our informal
receptions; their New Year's Day sociability in our calls, their
Christmas celebrations in our festival of Santa Claus. Much of our
domestic architecture reflects their influence: the gabled fronts, the
tiled fireplaces, the high "stoops," and the custom of sitting on them
in summer evenings. In general it is seen that the effect of democratic
institutions is to save the grain and reject the chaff, because
criticism becomes more close and punctual, abuses and license are not
chartered, and the individual is bereft of artificial supports and
disguises, and must appear more nearly as God made him.

[Illustration: Trepanning Men to be Sent to the Colonies]



CHAPTER FIFTH

LIBERTY, SLAVERY, AND TYRANNY


We left the colony at Jamestown emerging from thick darkness and much
tribulation toward the light. Some distance was still to be traversed
before full light and easement were attained; but fortune, upon the
whole, was kinder to Virginia than to most of the other settlements;
and though clouds gathered darkly now and then, and storms threatened,
and here and there a bolt fell, yet deliverance came beyond
expectation. Something Virginia suffered from Royal governors,
something from the Indians, something too from the imprudence and
wrong-headedness of her own people. But her story is full of stirring
and instructive passages. It tells how a community chiefly of
aristocratic constitution and sympathies, whose loyalty to the English
throne was deep and ardent, and whose type of life was patrician,
nevertheless were won insensibly and inevitably to espouse the
principles of democracy. It shows how, with honest men, a king may be
loved, and the system which he stands for reverenced and defended,
while yet the lovers and apologists choose and maintain a wholly
different system for themselves. The House of Stuart had none but
friends in Virginia; when the son of Charles the First was a fugitive,
Virginia offered him a home; and the follies and frailties of his
father, and the grotesque chicaneries of his grandfather, could not
alienate the colonists' affection. Yet, from the moment their Great
Charter was given them, they never ceased to defend the liberties which
it bestowed against every kingly effort to curtail or destroy them; and
on at least one occasion they fairly usurped the royal prerogative.
They presented, in short, the striking anomaly of a people
acknowledging a monarch and at the same time claiming the fullest
measure of political liberty till then enjoyed by any community in
modern history. They themselves perceived no inconsistency in their
attitude; but to us it is patent, and its meaning is that the sentiment
of a tradition may be cherished and survive long after intelligence and
experience have caused the thing itself to be consigned to the
rubbish-heap of the past.

So long as Sir Thomas Smythe occupied the president's chair of the
London Company, there could be no hope of substantial prosperity for
the Jamestown emigrants. He was a selfish and conceited satrap,
incapable of enlightened thought or beneficent action, who knew no
other way to magnify his own importance than by suffocating the rights
and insulting the self-respect of others. He had a protégé in Argall, a
disorderly ruffian who was made deputy-governor of the colony in 1617.
His administration was that of a freebooter; but the feeble and
dwindling colony had neither power nor spirit to do more than send a
complaint to London. Lord Delaware had in the meantime sailed for
Virginia, but died on the trip; Argall was, however, dismissed, and Sir
George Yeardley substituted for him--a man of gracious manners and
generous nature, but somewhat lacking in the force and firmness that
should build up a state. He had behind him the best men in the company
if not in all England: Sir Edward Sandys, the Earl of Southampton, and
Nicolas Ferrar. Smythe had had resignation forced upon him, and with
him the evil influences in the management retired to the background.
Sandys was triumphantly elected governor and treasurer, with Ferrar as
corporation counsel; Southampton was a powerful supporter. They were
all young men, all royalists, and all unselfishly devoted to the cause
of human liberty and welfare. Virginia never had better or more urgent
friends.

Yeardley, on his arrival, found distress and discouragement, and hardly
one man remaining in the place of twenty. The colonists had been robbed
both by process of law and without; they had been killed and had died
of disease; they had deserted and been deported; they had been denied
lands of their own, or the benefit of their own labor; and they had
been permitted no part in the management of their own affairs. The
rumor of these injuries and disabilities had got abroad, and no
recruits for the colony had been obtainable; the Indians were
ill-disposed, and the houses poor and few. Women too were lamentably
scanty, and the people had no root in the country, and no thought but
to leave it. Like the emigrants to the Klondike gold-fields in our own
day, they had designed only to better their fortunes and then depart.
The former hope was gone; the latter was all that was left.

Yeardley's business, in the premises, was agreeable and congenial; he
had a letter from the company providing for the abatement of past evils
and abuses, and the establishment of justice, security and happiness.
He sent messengers far and wide, summoning a general meeting to hear
his news and confer together for the common weal.

Hardly venturing to believe that any good thing could be in store for
them, the burgesses and others assembled, and crowded into the place of
meeting. Twenty-two delegates from the eleven plantations were there,
clad in their dingy and dilapidated raiment, and wide-brimmed hats;
most of them with swords at their sides, and some with rusty muskets in
their hands. Their cheeks were lank and their faces sunburned; their
bearing was listless, yet marked with some touch of curiosity and
expectation. There were among them some well-filled brows and strong
features, announcing men of ability and thoughtfulness, though they had
lacked the opportunity and the cue for action. Their long days on the
plantations, and their uneasy nights in the summer heats, had given
them abundant leisure to think over their grievances and misfortunes,
and to dream of possible reforms and innovations. But of what profit
was it? Their governors had no thought but to fill their own pockets,
the council was powerless or treacherous, and everything was slipping
away.

It was in the depths of summer--the 30th of July, 1619. More than a
year was yet to pass before the "Mayflower" would enter the wintry
shelter of Plymouth harbor. In the latitude of Jamestown the
temperature was almost tropical at this season, and exhausting to body
and spirit. The room in which they met, in the governor's house in
Jamestown, was hardly spacious enough for their accommodation: four
unadorned walls, with a ceiling that could be touched by an upraised
hand. It had none of the aspect of a hall of legislature, much less of
one in which was to take place an event so large and memorable as the
birth of liberty in a new world. But the delegates thronged in, and
were greeted at their entrance by Yeardley, who stood at a table near
the upper end of the room, with a secretary beside him and a clergyman
of the Church of England on his other hand. The colonists looked at his
urbane and conciliating countenance, and glanced at the document he
held in his hand, and wondered what would be the issue. Nothing of
moment, doubtless; still, they could scarcely be much worse off than
they were; and the new governor certainly had the air of having
something important to communicate. They took their places, leaning
against the walls, or standing with their hands clasped over the
muzzles of their muskets, or supporting one foot upon a bench; and the
gaze of all was concentrated on the governor. As he opened the paper, a
silence fell upon the assembly.

Such, we may imagine, were the surroundings and circumstances of this
famous gathering, the transactions of which fill so bright a page in
the annals of the early colonies. The governor asked the clergyman for
a blessing, and when the prayer was done suggested the choosing of a
chairman, or speaker. The choice fell upon John Pory, a member of the
former council. Then the governor read his letter from the company in
London.

The letter, in few words, opened the door to every reform which could
make the colony free, prosperous and happy, and declared all past
wrongs at an end. It merely outlined the scope of the improvements,
leaving it to the colonists themselves to fill in the details. "Those
cruel laws were abrogated, and they were to be governed by those free
laws under which his majesty's subjects in England lived." An annual
grand assembly, consisting of the governor and council and two
burgesses from each plantation, chosen by the people, was to be held;
and at these assemblies they were to frame whatever laws they deemed
proper for their welfare. These concessions were of the more value and
effect, because they were advocated in England by men who had only the
good of the colony at heart, and possessed power to enforce their will.

It seemed almost too good to be true: it was like the sun rising after
the long arctic night. Those sad faces flushed, and the moody eyes
kindled. The burgesses straightened their backs and lifted their heads;
they looked at one another, and felt that they were once more men.
There was a murmur of joy and congratulation; and thanks were uttered
to God, and to the Company, for what had been done. And forthwith they
set to work with life and energy, and with a judgment and foresight
which were hardly to have been looked for in legislators so untried, to
construct the platform of enactments upon which the commonwealth of
Virginia was henceforth to stand.

From the body of the delegates, two committees were selected to devise
the new laws and provisions, while the governor and the rest reviewed
the laws already in existence, to determine what part of them, if any,
was suitable for continuance. Among the articles agreed upon were
regulations relating to distribution and tenure of land, which replaced
all former patents and privileges, and set all holders on an equal
footing: the recognition of the Church of England as governing the mode
of worship in Virginia, with a good salary for clergymen and an
injunction that all and sundry were to appear at church every Sunday,
and bring their weapons with them--thus insuring Heaven a fair hearing,
while at the same time making provision against the insecurity of
carnal things. The wives of the planters as well as their husbands were
capacitated to own land, because, in a new world, a woman might turn
out to be as efficient as the man. This sounds almost prophetic; but it
was probably intended to operate on the cultivation of the silkworm.
Plantations of the mulberry had been ordered, and culture of the cocoon
was an industry fitting to the gentler sex, who were the more likely to
succeed in it on account of their known partiality for the product. On
the other hand, excess in apparel was kept within bounds by a tax. The
planting of vines was also ordered; but as a matter of fact the
manufacture of neither wine nor silk was destined to succeed in the
colony; tobacco and cotton were to be its staples, but the latter had
not at this epoch been attempted. Order and propriety among the
colonists were assured by penalties on gaming, drunkenness, and sloth;
and the better to guard against the proverbial wiles of Satan, a
university was sketched out, and direction was given that such children
of the heathen as showed indications of latent talent should be caught,
tamed and instructed, and employed as missionaries among their tribes.
Finally, a fixed price of three shillings for the best quality of
tobacco, and eighteen pence for inferior brands, was appointed; thus
giving the colony a currency which had the double merit of being a
sound medium for traffic, and an agreeable consolation and incense when
the labors of the day were past.

It was a good day's work; and the assembly dissolved with the
conviction that their time had never before been passed to such
advantage. Yeardley, knowing the disposition of the managers in London,
opposed no objection to the immediate practical enforcement of the new
enactments; and indeed Sandys, when he had an opportunity of examining
the digest, expressed the opinion that it had been "well and
judiciously formed." The colonists, for their part, dismissed all
anxieties and shadows from their minds, and fell to putting in crops
and putting up dwellings as men will who have a stake in their country,
and feel that they can live in it. Their confidence was not misplaced;
within a year from this time the number of the colonists had been more
than doubled, and all troubles seemed at an end.

So long, however, as James I. disgraced the throne of England, popular
liberties could never be quite sure of immunity; and during the five or
six years that he still had to live, he did his best to disturb the
felicity of his Virginian subjects. He was unable to do anything very
serious, and what he did do, was in contravention of law. He got Sandys
out of the presidency; but Southampton was immediately put in his
place; he tried to get away the patent which he himself had issued, and
finally did so; but the colony kept its laws and its freedom, though
the Throne thenceforward appointed the governors. He put a heavy tax on
tobacco, which he professed to regard as an invention of the enemy; and
he countenanced an attempt by Lord Warwick, in behalf of Argall, to
continue martial law in the colony instead of allowing trial by Jury;
but in this he was defeated. He sent out two commissioners to Virginia
to discover pretexts for harassing it, and took the matter out of the
hands of Parliament; but the Virginians maintained themselves until
death stepped in and put a final stop to his majesty's industry, and
Charles I. came to the throne.

The climate of Virginia does not predispose to exertion; yet farming
involves hard physical work; and, beyond anything else, the wealth of
Virginia was derived from farming. Manufactures had not come in view,
and were discouraged or forbidden by English decree. But, as we saw in
the early days of Jamestown, the settlers there were unused to work,
and averse from it; although, under the stimulus of Captain John Smith,
they did learn how to chop down trees. After the colony became popular,
and populous, the emigrants continued to be in a large measure of a
social class to whom manual labor is unattractive. A country in which
laborers are indispensable, and which is inhabited by persons
disinclined to labor, would seem to stand no good chance of achieving
prosperity. How, then, is the early prosperity of Virginia to be
explained? The charter did not make men work.

It was due to the employment of slave labor. Slaves in the Seventeenth
Century were easily acquired, and were of several varieties. At one
time, there were more white slaves than black. White captives were
often sold into slavery; and there was also a regular trade in
indentured slaves, or servants, sent from England. These were to work
out their freedom by a certain number of years of labor for their
purchaser. Convicts from the prisons were also utilized as slaves. In
the same year that the Virginia charter bestowed political freedom upon
the colonists, a Dutch ship landed a batch of slaves from the Guinea
coast, where the Dutch had a footing. They were strong fellows, and the
ardor of the climate suited them better than that of the regions
further north. Negroes soon came to be in demand therefore; they did
not die in captivity as the Indians were apt to do, and a regular trade
in them was presently established. A negro fetched in the market more
than twice as much as either a red or a white man, and repaid the
investment. There was no general sentiment against traffic in human
beings, and it was not settled that negroes were human, exactly.
Slavery at all events had been the normal condition of Guinea negroes
from the earliest times, and they undoubtedly were worse treated by
their African than by their European and American owners. They were
born slaves, or at least in slavery. There had of course been
enlightened humanitarians as far back as the Greek and Roman eras, who
had opined that the principle of slavery was wrong; and such men were
talking still; but ordinary people regarded their deliverances as being
in the nature of a counsel of perfection, which was not intended to be
observed in practice. There are fashions in humanitarianism, as in
other matters, and multitudes who denounced slavery in the first half
of this Nineteenth Century, were in no respect better practical
moralists than were the Virginians two hundred years before. But the
time had to come, in the course of human events, when negro slavery was
to cease in America; and those whose business interests, or sentimental
prejudices, were opposed to it, added the chorus of their disapproval
to the inscrutable movements of a Power above all prejudices. Negro
slavery, as an overt institution, is no more in these States; but he
would be a bold or a blind man who should maintain that slavery, both
black and white, has no existence among us to-day. Meanwhile the
Seventeenth Century planters of Virginia bought and sold their human
chattels with an untroubled conscience; and the latter, comprehending
even less of the ethics of the question than their masters did, were
reasonably happy. They were not aware that human nature was being
insulted and degraded in their persons: they were transported by no
moral indignation. When they were flogged, they suffered, but when
their bodies stopped smarting, no pain rankled in their minds. They
were treated like animals, and became like them. They had no anxieties;
they looked neither forward nor backward; their physical necessities
were provided for. White slavery gradually disappeared, but the feeling
prevailed that slavery was what negroes were intended for. The
planters, after a few generations, came to feel a sort of affection for
their bondsmen who had been born on the estates and handed down from
father to son. Self-interest, as well as natural kindliness, rendered
deliberate cruelties rare. The negroes, on the other hand, often loved
their masters, and would grieve to leave them. The evils of slavery
were not on the surface, but were subtle, latent, and far more
malignant than was even recently realized. The Abolitionists thought
the trouble was over when the Proclamation of Emancipation was signed.
"We can put on our coats and go home, now," said Garrison; and Wendell
Phillips said, "I know of no man to-day who can fold his arms and look
forward to his future with more confidence than the negro." We shall
have occasion to investigate the intelligence of these forecasts
by-and-by. But there is something striking in the fact that that
country which claims to be the freest and most highly civilized in the
world should be the last to give up "the peculiar institution." How can
devotion to liberty co-exist in the mind with advocacy of servitude?
This, too, is a subject to which we must revert hereafter. At the
period we are now treating, there were more white than black slaves,
and the princely estates of later times had not been thought of.
Indeed, in spite of their marriage to liberty, the colonists did not
yet feel truly at home. Marriage of a more concrete kind was needed for
that.

This defect was understood in England, and the Company took means to
remedy it. A number of desirable and blameless young women were
enlisted to go out to the colony and console the bachelors there. The
plan was discreetly carried out; the acquisition of the young ladies
was not made too easy, so that neither was their self-respect wounded,
nor were the bachelors allowed to feel that beauty and virtue in female
form were commonplace commodities. The romance and difficulty of the
situation were fairly well preserved. There stood the possible bride;
but she was available only with her own consent and approval; and
before entering the matrimonial estate, the bridegroom elect must pay
all charges--so many pounds of tobacco. And how many pounds of tobacco
was a good wife worth? From one point of view, more than was ever grown
in Virginia; but the sentimental aspect of the transaction had to be
left out of consideration, or the enterprise would have come to an
untimely conclusion. From one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds
of the weed was the average commercial figure; it paid expenses and
gave the agents a commission; for the rest, the profit was all the
colonist's. Many a happy home was founded in this way, and, so far as
we know, there were no divorces and no scandals. But it must not be
forgotten that, although tobacco was paid for the wife, there was still
enough left to fill a quiet pipe by the conjugal fireside. They were
the first Christian firesides where this soothing goddess had presided:
no wonder they were peaceful!

Charles I. was a young man, with a large responsibility on his
shoulders; and two leading convictions in his mind. The first was that
he ought to be the absolute head of the nation; Parliament might take
counsel with him, but should not control him when it came to action.
The same notion had prevailed with James I., and was to be the
immediate occasion of the downfall of James II.; as for Charles II.,
his long experience of hollow oak trees, and secret chambers in the
houses of loyalists, had taught him the limitations of the kingly
prerogative before he began his reign; and the severed head of his
father clinched the lesson. But the Stuarts, as a family, were
disinclined to believe that the way to inherit the earth was by
meekness, and none of them believed it so little as the first Charles.

The second conviction he entertained was that he must have revenues,
and that they should be large and promptly paid. His whole pathetic
career--tragic seems too strong a word for it, though it ended in
death--was a mingled story of nobility, falsehood, gallantry and
treachery, conditioned by his blind pursuit of these two objects, money
and power.

Upon general principles, then, it was to be expected that Charles would
be the enemy of Virginian liberties. But it happened that money was his
more pressing need at the time his attention first was turned on the
colony; he saw that revenues were to be gained from them; he knew that
the charter recently given to them had immensely increased their
productiveness; and as to his prerogative, he had not as yet felt the
resistance which his parliament had in store for him, and was therefore
not jealous of the political privileges of a remote settlement--one,
too, which seemed to be in the hands of loyal gentlemen. "Their
liberties harm me not," was his thought, "and they appear to be
favorable to the success of the tobacco crop; the tobacco monopoly can
put money in my purse; therefore let the liberties remain. Should these
planters ever presume to go too far, it will always be in my power to
stop them." Thus it came about that tobacco, after procuring the
Virginians loving wives, was also the means of securing the favor of
their king. But they, naturally, ascribed the sunshine of his smile to
some innate merit in themselves, and their gratitude made them his
enthusiastic supporters as long as he lived. They mourned his death,
and opened their arms to all royalist refugees from the power of
Cromwell. When Cromwell sent over a man-of-war, however, they accepted
the situation. Virginia had by that time grown to so considerable an
importance that they could adopt a somewhat conservative attitude
toward the affairs even of the mother country.

The ten years following Charles's accession were a period of peace and
growth in the colony; of great increase in population and in
production, and of a steady ripening of political liberties. But the
conditions under which this development went on were different from
those which existed in New England and in New York. The Puritans were
actuated by religious ideals, the Dutch by commercial projects chiefly;
but the Virginia planters were neither religious enthusiasts nor
tradesmen. Their tendency was not to huddle together in towns and close
communities, but to spread out over the broad and fertile miles of
their new country, and live each in a little principality of his own,
with his slaves and dependants around him. They modeled their lives
upon those of the landed gentry in England; and when their crops were
gathered, they did not go down to the wharfs and haggle over their
disposal, but handed them over to agents, who took all trouble off
their hands, and after deducting commissions and charges made over to
them the net profits. This left the planters leisure to apply
themselves to liberal pursuits; they maintained a dignified and
generous hospitality, and studied the art of government. A race of
gallant gentlemen grew up, well educated, and consciously superior to
the rest of the population, who had very limited educational
facilities, and but little of that spirit of equality and independence
which characterized the northern colonies. Towns and cities came
slowly; the plantation system was more natural and agreeable under the
circumstances. Orthodoxy in religion was the rule; and though at first
there was a tendency to eschew narrowness and bigotry, yet gradually
the church became hostile to dissenters, and Puritans and Quakers were
as unwelcome in Virginia as were the latter in Massachusetts, or
Episcopalians anywhere in New England. All this seems incompatible with
democracy; and probably it might in time have grown into a liberal
monarchical system. The slaves were not regarded as having any rights,
political or personal; their masters exercised over them the power of
life and death, as well as all lesser powers. The bulk of the white
population was not oppressed, and was able to get a living, for
Virginia was "the best poor man's country in the world"; there was
little or none of the discontent that embarrassed the New Amsterdam
patroons; the charter gave them representation, and their manhood was
not undermined. Had Virginia been an island, or otherwise isolated, and
free from any external interference, we can imagine that the planters
might at last have found it expedient to choose a king from among their
number, who would have found a nobility and a proletariat ready made.
But Virginia was not isolated. She was loyal to the Stuarts, because
they did not bring to bear upon her the severities which they inflicted
upon their English subjects; but when she became a royal colony, and
had to put up with corrupt and despotic favorites of the monarch, who
could do what they pleased, and were responsible to nobody but the
monarch who had made them governor, loyalty began to cool. Moreover,
men whose ability and advanced opinions made them distasteful to the
English kings, fled to the colonies, and to Virginia among the rest,
and sowed the seeds of revolt. Calamity makes strange bedfellows: the
planters liked outside oppression as little as did the common people,
and could not but make common cause with them. The distance between the
two was diminished. Social equality there could hardly be; but
political and theoretic equality could be acknowledged. The English
monarchy made the American republic; spurred its indolence, and united
its parts. Man left to himself is lax and indifferent; from first to
last it is the pressure of wrong that molds him into the form of right.
George I. gave the victory to the Americans in the Revolution as much
as Washington did. And before George's time, the colonies had been
keyed up to the struggle by years of injustice and outrage. And this
injustice and outrage seemed the more intolerable because they had been
preceded by a period of comparative liberality. It needs powerful
pressure to transform English gentlemen with loyalist traditions, and
sympathies into a democracy; but it can be done, and the English kings
were the men to do it.

Until the period of unequivocal tyranny arrived, the chief shadow upon
the colony was cast by its relations with the Indians. Powhatan, the
father of Pocahontas, and chief over tribes whose domains extended over
thousands of square miles, kept friendship with the whites till his
death in 1618. His brother, Opechankano, professed to inherit the
friendship along with the chieftainship; but the relations between the
red men and the colonists had never been too cordial, and the latter,
measuring their muskets and breastplates against the stone arrows and
deerskin shirts of the savages, fell into the error of despising them.
The Indians, for their part, stood in some awe of firearms, which they
had never held in their own hands, and the penalty for selling which to
them had been made capital years before. But they had their own methods
of dealing with foes; and since neither side had ever formally come to
blows, they had received no object lesson to warn them to keep hands
off. Opechankano was intelligent and far-seeing; he perceived that the
whites were increasing in numbers, and that if they were not checked
betimes, they would finally overrun the country. But he did not see so
far as his brother, who had known that the final domination of the
English could not be prevented, and had therefore adopted the policy of
conciliating them as the best. Opechankano, therefore, quietly planned
the extermination of the settlers; the familiar terms on which the
white and red men stood played into his hands. Indians were in the
habit of visiting the white settlements, and mingling with the people.
Orders for concerted action were secretly circulated among the savages,
who were to hold themselves ready for the signal.

It might after all never have been given, but for an unlooked for
incident. A noisy and troublesome Indian, who imagined that bullets
could not kill him, fell into a quarrel with a settler, and slew him;
and was himself shot while attempting to escape from arrest. "Sooner
shall the heavens fall," devoutly exclaimed Opechankano, when informed
of this mishap, "than I will break the peace of Powhatan." But the
waiting tribes knew that the time had come.

On the morning of March 22, 1622, the settlers arose as usual to the
labors of the day; some of them took their hoes and spades and went out
into the fields; others busied themselves about their houses. Numbers
of Indians were about, but this excited no remark or suspicion; they
were not formidable; a dog could frighten them; a child could hold them
in check. Indians strolled into the cabins, and sat at the
breakfast-tables. No one gave them a second thought. No one looked over
his shoulder when an Indian passed behind him.

But, miles up the country from Jamestown lived a settler who kept an
Indian boy, whom he instructed, and who made himself useful about the
place; and of all the Indians in Virginia that day he was the only one
whose heart relented. His brother had lain with him the night before,
and had given him the word: he was to kill the settler and his family
the next morning. The boy seemed to assent, and the other went on his
way. The boy lay till dawn, his savage mind divided between fear of the
great chief and compassion for the white man who had been kind to him
and taught him. In the early morning he arose and stood beside his
benefactor's bed. The man slept: one blow, and he would be dead. But
the boy did not strike; he wakened him and told him of the horror that
was about to befall.

Pace--such was the settler's name--did not wait for confirmation of the
tale; indeed, as he ran to the paddock to get his packhorse, he could
see the smoke of burning cabins rising in the still air, and could
hear, far off, the yells of the savages as they plied their work.

He sprang on the horse's back, with his musket across the withers, and
set off at a gallop toward Jamestown. Most of the colonists lived in
that neighborhood; if he could get there in time many lives might be
saved. As he rode, he directed his course to the cabins, on the right
hand and on the left, that lay in his way, and gave the alarm. Many of
the savages, who had not yet begun their work, at once took to flight;
they would not face white men when on their guard. In other places, the
warning came too late. The missionary, who had devoted his life to
teaching the heathen that men should love one another, was inhumanly
butchered. Pace arrived in season to avert the danger from the bulk of
the little population; but, of the four thousand scattered over the
country-side, three hundred and forty-seven died that morning, with the
circumstances of hideous atrocity which were the invariable
accompaniments of Indian massacre. The colonists were appalled; and for
a time it seemed as if the purpose of Opechankano would be realized.
Two thousand settlers came in from the outlying districts,
panic-stricken, and after living for a while crowded together in
unwholesome quarters in the vicinity of Jamestown, took ship and
returned to England. Hardly one in ten of the plantations was not
deserted. The bolder spirits, who remained, organized a war of
extermination, in which they were supported and re-enforced by the
company, who sent over men and weapons as soon as the news was known in
England. But the campaign resolved itself into long and harassing
attacks, ambuscades and reprisals, extending over many years. There
could be no pitched battles with Indians; they gave way, but only to
circumvent and surprise. The whites were resolved to make no peace, and
to give no quarter to man, woman or child. The formerly peaceful
settlement became inured to blood and cruelty. But the red men could
not be wholly driven away. Just twenty years after the first massacre
the same implacable chief, now a decrepit old man, planned a second
one; some hundreds were murdered; but the colonists were readier and
stronger now, and they gathered themselves up at once, and inflicted a
crushing vengeance. The ancient chief was finally taken, and either
died of wounds received in fight, or was slain by a soldier after
capture. After 1646, the borders of Virginia were safe. There is no
redeeming feature in this Indian warfare, which fitfully survives, in
remote parts of our country, even now. It aided, perhaps, to train the
race of pioneers and frontiersmen who later became one of the most
remarkable features of our early population. Contact with the savage
races inoculated us, perhaps, with a touch of their stoicism and
grimness. But in our conflicts with them there was nothing noble or
inspiring; and there could be no object in view on either side but
extermination. Our Indian fighters became as savage and merciless as
the creatures they pursued. The Indian must be fought by the same
tactics he adopts--cunning, stealth, surprise, and then unrelenting
slaughter, with the sequel of the scalping knife. They compel us to
descend to their level in war, and we have utterly failed to raise them
to our own in peace. Some of them have possessed certain harshly
masculine traits which we can admire; some of them have showed broad
and virile intelligence, the qualities of a general, a diplomatist, or
even of a statesman. There have been, and are, so-called tame Indians;
but such were not worth taming. As a whole, the red tribes have
resisted all attempts to lift them to the civilized level and keep them
there. Roger Williams, and the "apostle," John Eliot, were their
friends, and won their regard; but neither Williams' influence nor
Eliot's Bible left any lasting trace upon them. The Indian is
irreclaimable; disappointment is the very mildest result that awaits
the effort to reclaim him. He is wild to the marrow; no bird or beast
is so wild as he. He is a human embodiment of the untrodden woods, the
undiscovered rivers, the austere mountains, the pathless prairies--of
all those parts and aspects of nature which are never brought within
the smooth sway of civilization, because, as soon as civilization
appears, they are, so far as their essential quality is concerned,
gone. To hear the yelp of the coyote, you must lie alone in the sage
brush near the pool in the hollow of the low hills by moonlight; it
will never reach your ears through the bars of the menagerie cage. To
know the mountain, you must confront the avalanche and the precipice
uncompanioned, and stand at last on the breathless and awful peak,
which lifts itself and you into a voiceless solitude remote from man
and yet no nearer to God; but if you journey with guides and jolly
fellowship to some Mountain House, never so airily perched, you would
as well visit a panorama. To comprehend the ocean, you must meet it in
its own inviolable domain, where it tosses heavenward its careless
nakedness, and laughs with death; from the deck of a steamboat you will
never find it, though you sail as far as the Flying Dutchman. But the
solitude which nature reveals, and which alone reveals her, does but
prepare you for the inaproachableness that shines out at you from the
Indian's eyes. Seas are shallow and continents but a span compared with
the breadths and depths which separate him from you. The sphinx will
yield her mystery, but he will not unveil his; you may touch the poles
of the planet, but you can never lay your hand on him. The same God
that made you, made him also in His image; but if you try to bridge the
gulf between you, you will learn something of God's infinitude.

Sir George Yeardley and Sir Francis Wyatt both held the office of
governor twice, and with good repute; in 1630, Sir John Harvey
succeeded the former. He was the champion of monopolists; he would
divide the land among a few, and keep the rest in subjection. He fought
with the legislature from the first; he could not wring their rights
from them, but he distressed and irritated the colony, levying
arbitrary fines, and browbeating all and sundry with the brutality of
an ungoverned temper. His chief patron was Lord Baltimore, a Roman
Catholic, and therefore disfavored by the Protestant colony, who would
not suffer him to plant in their domain. He bought a patent authorizing
him to establish a colony in the northern part of Virginia, which was
afterward called Maryland, being cut off from the older colony; and
this diminution of their territory much displeased the Virginians. But
Harvey supported him throughout; and permitted mass to be said in
Virginia. He likewise prevented the settlers from carrying on the
border warfare with the Indians, lest it should disturb his perquisites
from the fur trade. Violent scenes took place in the hall of assembly,
and hard words were given and exchanged; the planters were men of hot
passions, and the conduct of the governor became intolerable to them.
Matters came to a head during the last week in April of 1635. An
unauthorized gathering in York complained of an unjust tax and of other
malfeasances; whereupon Harvey cried mutiny, and had the leaders
arrested. But the boot was on the other leg. Several members of
council, with a company of musketeers at their back, came to his house;
Matthews, with whom the governor had lately had a fierce quarrel, and
the other planters, tramped into the broad hall of the dwelling, with
swords in their hands and threatening looks, and confronted him. John
Utie brought down his hand with staggering force on his shoulder,
exclaiming, "I arrest you for treason!" "How, for treason?" queried the
frightened governor. "You have betrayed our forts to our enemies of
Maryland," replied several stern voices. Harvey glanced from one to
another; in the background were the musketeers; plainly this was no
time for trifling. He offered to do whatever they demanded. They
required the release of prisoners, which was immediately done, and bade
him prepare to answer before the assembly. They would listen to no
arguments and no excuses; he was told by Matthews, with a menacing
look, that the people would have none of him. "You intend no less than
the subversion of Maryland," protested Harvey; but he promised to
return to England, and John West, who had already acted as ad-interim
governor while Harvey was on his way to Virginia, was at once elected
in his place.

This incident showed of what stuff the Virginians were made. It was an
early breaking-out of the American spirit, which would never brook
tyranny. In offering violence to the king's governor they imperiled
their own lives; but their blood was up, and they heeded no danger.
When Harvey presented himself before Charles at the privy council, his
majesty remarked that he must be sent back at all hazards, because the
sending him to England had been an assumption on the colonists' part of
regal power; and, tobacco or no tobacco, the line must be drawn there.
If the charges against him were sustained, he might stay but a day; if
not, his term should be extended beyond the original commission. A new
commission was given him, and back he went; but this shuttlecock
experience seems to have quelled his spirit, and we hear no more of
quarrels with the Virginia council. Wyatt relieved him in 1639; and in
1642 came Sir William Berkeley. This man, who was born about the
beginning of the century, was twice governor; his present term, lasting
ten years, was followed by a nine years' interval; reappointed again in
1660, he was in power when the rebellion broke out which was led by
Nathaniel Bacon. Little is known of him outside of his American record;
in his first term, under Charles I., he acted simply as the creature of
that monarch, and aroused no special animosities on his own account:
during the reign of Cromwell, he disappeared; but when Charles II.
ascended the throne, Berkeley, though then an old man, was thought to
be fitted by his previous experience for the Virginia post, and was
returned thither. But years seemed to have soured his disposition, and
lessened his prudence, and, as we shall see, his bloodthirsty conduct
after Bacon's death was the occasion of his recall in disgrace; and he
died, like Andros more than half a century later, with the curse of a
people on his grave.

But his first appearance was auspicious; he brought instructions
designed to increase the reign of law and order in the colony, without
infringing upon its existing liberties. Allegiance to God and the king
were enjoined, additional courts were provided for, traffic with the
Indians was regulated, annual assemblies, with a negative voice upon
their acts by the governor, were commanded. The only discordant note in
the instructions referred to the conditions of maritime trade,
afterward known in history as the Navigation Acts. The colony desired
free trade, which, as it had no manufactures, was obviously to its
benefit. But it was as obviously to the interest of the king that he
alone should enjoy the right of controlling all imports into the
colony, and absorbing all its exports; and his rulings were framed to
secure that end. But for the present the Acts were not carried into
effect; and, on the other hand, the prospect was held out that there
should be no taxation except what was voted by the people themselves;
and their contention that they, who knew the conditions and needs of
their colonial existence, were better able to regulate it than those at
home, was allowed. By way of evincing their recognition of this
courtesy, the assembly passed among other laws, one against toleration
of any other than the episcopalian form of worship; and when Charles
was beheaded, in 1649, it voted to retain Berkeley in office. But when
in the next year, the fugitive son of the dead king undertook to issue
a commission confirming him in his place, Parliament intervened.
Virginia was brought to her bearings; and the Navigation Acts were
brought up again. Cromwell, no less than Charles, appreciated the
advantages of a monopoly.

Restrictions on commerce, first imposed by Spain, were first resisted
by the Dutch, with the result of rendering them the leading maritime
power. Cromwell wished to appropriate or share this advantage; but
instead of adopting the means employed for that purpose by the Dutch,
he decreed that none but English ships should trade with the English
colonies, and that foreign ships should bring to England only the
products of their own countries. The restriction did little harm to
Virginia, so long as England was able to take all her products, and to
supply all her needs; but it brought on war with Holland, in which both
the moral and the naval advantage was on the side of the Dutch. But
England acquired a foothold in the West Indies, and her policy was
maintained. Virginia asked that she should have representatives to act
for her in England, and when a body of commissioners was appointed to
examine colonial questions, among them were Richard Bennett and William
Clairborne, both of them colonists, and men of force and ability. In
the sequel, the liberties of the colony were enlarged, and Bennett was
made governor by vote of the assembly itself, which continued to elect
governors during the ascendency of Parliament in England. When Richard
Cromwell, who had succeeded the great Protector, resigned his office,
the Virginia burgesses chose Sir William Berkeley to rule over them,
and he acknowledged their authority. Meanwhile the Navigation Acts were
so little enforced that smuggling was hardly illegal; and, in 1658, the
colonists actually invited foreign nations to deal with them. This was
the period of Virginia's greatest freedom before the Revolution. The
suffrage was in the hands of all taxpayers; in religious matters, all
restrictions except those against the Quakers were removed; loyalists
and roundheads mingled amicably in planting and legislation, and the
differences which had arrayed them against one another in England were
forgotten. The population increased to thirty thousand, and the
inhabitants developed among themselves an ardent patriotism. It is not
surprising. Their country was one of the richest and loveliest in the
world; everything which impairs the enjoyment of life was eliminated or
minimized; hucksters, pettifoggers and bigots were scarce as June
snowflakes; indentured servants, on their emancipation, were speedily
given the suffrage; it might almost be said that a man might do
whatever he pleased, within the limits of criminal law. Assuredly,
personal liberty was far greater at this epoch, in Virginia, than it is
today in New York City or Chicago. The instinct of the Virginians, in
matters of governing, was so far as possible to let themselves alone;
the planters, in the seclusion of their estates, were practically
subject to no law but their own pleasure. There was probably no place
in the civilized world where so much intelligent happiness was to be
had as in Virginia during the years immediately preceding the
Restoration.

What would have been the political result had the absence of all
artificial pressure indefinitely continued? Two tendencies were
observable, working, apparently, in opposite directions. On one side
were the planters, many of them aristocratic by origin as well as by
circumstance; who lived in affluence, were friendly to the established
church, enjoyed a liberal education, and naturally assumed the reins of
power. The law which gave fifty acres of land to the settler who
imported an emigrant, while it made for the enlargement of estates,
created also a large number of tenants and dependants, who would be
likely to support their patrons and proprietors, who exercised so much
control over their welfare. These dependants found the conditions of
existence comfortable, and even after they had become their own
masters, they would be likely to consult the wishes of the men who had
been the occasion of their good fortune. Neither education nor
religious instruction were so readily obtainable as to threaten to
render such a class discontented with their condition by opening to
them hitherto unknown gates of advantage; and the suffrage, when by
ownership of private property they had qualified themselves to exercise
it, would at once appease their independent instincts, and at the same
time make them willing, in using it, to follow the lead or suggestion
of men so superior to them in intelligence and in political sagacity.
From this standpoint, then, it seemed probable that a self-governing
community of the special kind existing in Virginia would drift toward
an aristocratic form of rule.

But the matter could be regarded in another way. Free suffrage is a
power having a principle of life within itself; it creates in the mind
that which did not before exist, and educates its possessor first by
prompting him to ask himself of what improvement his condition is
susceptible, and then by forcing him to review his desire by the light
of its realization--by practical experience of its effects, in other
words: a method whose teachings are more thorough and convincing than
any school or college is able to supply. The use of the ballot, in
short, as a means of instruction in the problems of government, takes
the place of anything else; it will of itself build up a people both
capable of conducting their own affairs, and resolved to do so. The
plebeians of Virginia, therefore, who began by being poor and ignorant
emigrants, or indentured servants, to whom the planters accorded such
privileges because it had never occurred to them that a plebeian can
ever become anything else--these men, unconsciously to themselves,
perhaps, were on the road which leads to democracy. The time would come
when they would cease to follow the lead of the planters; when their
interests and the planters' would clash. In that collision, their
numbers would give them the victory. With a similar community planted
in the old world, such might not be the issue; the strong influence of
tradition would combat it, and the surrounding pressure of settled
countries, which offered no escape or asylum for the man of radical
ideas. But the boundaries of Virginia were the untrammeled wilderness;
any man who could not have his will in the colony had this limitless
expanse at his disposal; there could be no finality for him in the
decrees of assemblies, if he possessed the courage of his convictions
in sufficient measure to make him match himself against the red man,
and be independent not only of any special form of society, but of
society itself. The consciousness of this would hearten him to
entertain free thoughts, and to strive for their embodiment. It was
partly this, no doubt, which, in the Seventeenth Century, drove
hundreds of Ishmaels into the interior, where they became the Daniel
Boones and the Davy Crocketts of legend and romance. So, although
Virginia was as little likely as any of the colonies to breed a
democracy, yet even there it was a more than possible outcome of the
situation, even with no outside stimulus. But the old world, because it
desired the oppression of America, was to become the immediate agent of
its emancipation.

There was rejoicing in Virginia when Charles II. acceded to power; on
the part of the planters, because they saw opportunity for political
distinction; on the part of the plebeians, as the expression of a
loyalty to kingship which centuries had made instinctive in them.
Berkeley, putting himself in line with the predominant feeling,
summoned the assembly in the name of the king, thus announcing without
rebuke the termination of the era of self-government. The members who
were elected were mostly royalists. They met in 1661. It was found that
the Navigation Acts, which had been a dead letter ever since their
passage, were to be revived in full force; and the increase of the
colony in the meanwhile made them more than ever unwelcome. The exports
were much larger than before, and unless the colony could have a free
market for them the profits must be materially lessened. And again,
since England was the only country from which the Virginian could
purchase supplies, her merchants could charge him what they pleased.
This was galling alike to royalists and roundheads in Virginia, and
quickly healed the breach, such as it was, between the parties.
Charles's true policy would have been to widen the gulf between them;
instead of that, he forced them into each other's arms. It was
determined to send Berkeley to England to ask relief; he accepted the
commission, but his sympathies were not with the colonists, and he
obtained nothing. Evidently, there could be no relief but in
independence, and it was still a hundred years too early for that. The
exasperation which this state of things produced in the great
landowners did more for the cause of democracy than could decades of
peaceful evolution. But the colonists could no longer have things their
own way. Liberal laws were repealed, and intolerance and oppression
took their place. Heretics were persecuted; the power of the church in
civil affairs was increased; and fines and taxes on the industry of the
colony were wanton and excessive. The king of England directly ruled
Virginia. The people were forced to pay Berkeley a thousand pounds
sterling as his salary, and he declared he ought to get three times as
much even as that. His true character was beginning to appear. The
judges were appointed by the king, and the license thus given them
resulted in a petty despotism; when an official wanted money, he caused
a tax to be levied for the amount. Appeals were vain, and ere long were
prohibited. The assembly, partisans of the king, declared themselves
permanent, so that all chance for the people to be better represented
was gone, and as the members fixed their own pay, and fixed it at a
preposterous figure, the colony began to groan in earnest. But worse
was to come. The suffrage was restricted to freeholders and
householders, and at a stroke, all but a fraction of the colonists were
deprived of any voice in their own government. The spread of education,
never adequate, was stopped altogether. "I thank God there are no free
schools nor printing," Sir William Berkeley was able to say, "and I
hope we shall not have, these hundred years; for learning has brought
disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has
divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from
both!" This was a succinct and full formulation of the spirit which has
ever tended to make the earth a hell for its inhabitants. "The
ministers," added the governor, "should pray oftener, and preach less."
But he spake in all solemnity; there was not the ghost of a sense of
humor in his whole insufferable carcass.

The downward course was not to stop here. Charles, with the
freehandedness of a highwayman, presented two of his favorites, in
1673, for a term of one and thirty years, with the entire colony! This
act stirred even the soddenness of the legislature. At the time of
their election, a dozen years before, they had been royalists indeed,
but men of honor, intending the good of the colony; and had tried, as
we saw, to stop the enforcement of the Navigation Acts. But when they
discovered that they could continue themselves in office indefinitely,
with such salary as they chose to demand, they soon became indifferent
about the Navigation Acts, or anything else which respected the welfare
and happiness of their fellows. Let the common folk do the work, and
the better sort enjoy the proceeds: that was the true and only
respectable arrangement. We may say that it sounds like a return to the
dark ages; but perhaps if we enter into our closets and question
ourselves closely, we shall find that precisely the same principles for
which Berkeley and his assembly stood in 1673, are both avowed and
carried into effect in this same country, in the very year of grace
which is now passing over us. A nation, even in America, takes a great
deal of teaching.

But the generosity of Charles startled the assembly out of their
porcine indifference, for it threatened to bring to bear upon them the
same practices by which they had destroyed the happiness of the colony.
If the king had given over to these two men all sovereignty in
Virginia, what was to prevent these gentlemen from dissolving the
assembly, who had become, as it were, incorporate with their seats, and
had hoped to die in them--and ruling the country and them without any
legislative medium whatever? Accordingly, with gruntings of dismay,
they chose three agents to sail forthwith to England, and expostulate
with the merry monarch. The expostulation was couched in the most
servile terms, as of men who love to be kicked, but hope to live, if
only to be kicked again. Might the colony, they concluded, be permitted
to buy itself out of the hands of its new owners, at their own price?
And might the people of Virginia be free from any tax not approved by
their assembly? That was the sum of their petition.

The king let his lawyers talk over the matter, and, when they reported
favorably, good-naturedly said, "So let it be, then!" and permitted a
charter to be drawn up. But before the broad seal could be affixed to
it he altered his mind, for causes satisfactory to him, and the envoys
were sent home, poorer than they came. But before relating what awaited
them there, we must advert briefly to the doings of George Calvert,
Lord Baltimore in the Irish peerage, in his new country of Maryland.



CHAPTER SIXTH

CATHOLIC, PHILOSOPHER, AND REBEL


The first Lord Baltimore, whose family name was Calvert, was a
Yorkshireman, born at the town of Kipling in 1580. He entered
Parliament in his thirtieth year, and was James's Secretary of State
ten years later. He was a man of large, tranquil nature, philosophic,
charitable, loving peace; but these qualities were fused by a concrete
tendency of thought, which made him a man of action, and determined
that action in the direction of practical schemes of benevolence. The
contemporary interest in America as a possible arena of enterprise and
Mecca of religious and political dissenters, attracted his sympathetic
attention; and when, in 1625, being then five-and-forty years of age,
he found in the Roman Catholic communion a refuge from the clamor of
warring sects, and as an immediate consequence tendered his resignation
as secretary to the head of the Church of England, he found himself
with leisure to put his designs in execution. He had, upon his
conversion, been raised to the rank of Baron Baltimore in the peerage
of Ireland; and his change of faith in no degree forfeited him the
favor of the king. When therefore he asked for a charter to found a
colony in Avalon, in Newfoundland, it was at once granted, and the
colony was sent out; but his visits to it in 1627 and 1629 convinced
him that the climate was too inclement for his purposes, and he
requested that it might be transferred to the northern parts of
Virginia, which he had visited on his way to England. This too was
permitted; but before the new charter had been sealed Lord Baltimore
died. The patent thereupon passed to his son Cecil, who was also a
Catholic. He devoted his life to carrying out his father's designs. The
characters of the two men were, in their larger elements, not
dissimilar; and the sequel showed that colonial enterprise could be
better achieved by one man of kindly and liberal disposition, and
persistent resolve, than by a corporation, some of whose members were
sure to thwart the wishes of others. Conditions of wider scope than the
settlement of Maryland obstructed and delayed its proprietor's plans;
conflicts and changes of government in England, and jealousy and
violence on the part of Virginia, had their influence; but this quiet,
benign, resolute young man (who was but seven-and-twenty when the grant
made him sovereign of a kingdom) never lost his temper or swerved from
his aim: overcame, apparently without an effort, the disabilities which
might have been expected to hamper the professor of a faith as little
consonant with the creed of the two Charleses as of Cromwell; was as
well regarded, politically, by cavaliers as by roundheads; and finally
established his ownership and control of his heritage, and, after a
beneficent rule of over forty years, died in peace and honor with his
people and the world. The story of colonial Maryland has a flavor of
its own, and throws still further light on the subject of popular
self-government--the source and solution of American history.

The idea of the Baltimores, as outlined in their charter, and followed
in their practice, was to try the experiment of a democratic monarchy.
They would found a state the people of which should enjoy all the
freedom of action and thought that sane and well-disposed persons can
desire, within the boundaries of their personal concerns; they should
not be meddled with; each man's home should be his castle; they should
say what taxes should be collected, and what civil officers should
attend to their collective affairs. They should be like passengers on a
ship, free to sleep or wake, sit or walk, speak or be mute, eat or
fast, as they pleased: do anything in fact except scuttle the ship or
cut the rigging--or ordain to what port she should steer, or what
course the helmsman should lay. Matters of high policy, in other words,
should be the care of the proprietor; everything less than that,
broadly speaking, should be left to the colonists themselves. The
proprietor could not get as close to their personal needs as they
could: and they, preoccupied with private interests, could not see so
far and wide as he could. If then it were arranged that they should be
afforded every facility and encouragement to make their wants known:
and if it were guaranteed that he would adopt every means that
experience, wisdom and good-will suggested to gratify those wants: what
more could mortal man ask? There was nothing abnormal in the idea. The
principle is the same as that on which the Creator has placed man in
nature: man is perfectly at liberty to do as he pleases; only, he must
adapt himself to the law of gravitation, to the resistance of matter,
to hot and cold, wet and dry, and to the other impersonal necessities
by which the material universe is conditioned. The control of these
natural laws, as they are called, could not advantageously be given in
charge to man; even had he the brains to manage them, he could not
spare the time from his immediate concerns. He is well content,
accordingly, to leave them to the Power that put him where he is; and
he does not feel his independence infringed upon in so doing. When his
little business goes wrong, however, he can petition his Creator to
help him out: or, what amounts to the same thing, he can find out in
what respect he has failed to conform to the laws of nature, and, by
returning into harmony with them, insure himself success. What the
Creator was to mankind at large, Lord Baltimore proposed to be to his
colony; and, following this supreme example, and binding himself to
place the welfare of his people before all other considerations, how
could he make a mistake?

In arguments about the best ways of managing nations or communities, it
has been generally conceded that this scheme of an executive head on
one side, and a people freely communicating their wants to him on the
other, is sound, provided, first, that he is as solicitous about their
welfare as they themselves are; and secondly, that means exist for
continuous and unchecked intercommunication between them and him:--it
being premised, of course, that the ability of the head is commensurate
with his willingness. And leaving basic principles for the moment
aside, it is notorious that one-man power is far prompter, weightier,
and cleaner-cut than the confused and incomplete compromises of a body
of representatives are apt to be.

All this may be conceded. And yet experience shows that the one-man
system, even when the man is a Lord Baltimore, is unsatisfactory. Lord
Baltimore, indeed, finally achieved a technical success; his people
loved and honored him, his wishes were measurably realized, and, so far
as he was concerned, Maryland was the victim of fewer mistakes than
were the other colonies. But the fact that Lord Baltimore's career
closed in peace and credit was due less to what he did and desired,
than to the necessity his career was under of sooner or later coming to
a close. Had he possessed a hundred times the ability and benevolence
that were his, and had been immortal into the bargain, the people would
have cast him out; they were willing to tolerate him for a few years,
more or less, but as a fixture--No! "Tolerate" is too harsh a word; but
another might be too weak. The truth is, men do not care half so much
what they get, as how they get it. The wolf in Aesop's fable keenly
wanted a share of the bones which made his friend the mastiff so sleek;
but the hint that the bones and the collar went together drove him
hungry but free back to his desert. It is of no avail to give a man all
he asks for; he resents having to ask you for it, and wants to know by
what right you have it to give. A man can be grateful for friendship,
for a sympathetic look, for a brave word spoken in his behalf against
odds--he can be your debtor for such things, and keep his manhood
uncompromised. But if you give him food, and ease, or preferment, and
condescension therewith, look for no thanks from him; esteem yourself
fortunate if he do not hold you his enemy. The gifts of the soul are
free; but material benefits are captivity. So the Maryland colonists,
recognizing that their proprietor meant well, forgave him his
generosity, and his activities in their behalf--but only because they
knew that his day would presently be past. Man is infinite as well as
finite: infinite in his claims, finite in his power of giving. And for
Baltimore to presume to give the people all they claimed, was as much
as to say that his fullness could equal their want, or that his rights
and capacities were more than theirs. He gave them all that a democracy
can possess--except the one thing that constitutes democracy; that is,
absolute self-direction. It may well be that their little ship of
state, steered by themselves, would have encountered many mishaps from
which his sagacious guidance preserved it. But rather rocks with their
pilotage than port with his: and beyond forgiving him their magnanimity
could not go.

There is little more than this to be derived from study of the Maryland
experiment. Let a man manage himself, in big as well as in little
things, and he will be happy on raw clams and plain water, with a
snow-drift for a pillow--as we saw him happy in Plymouth Bay: but give
him roast ortolans and silken raiment, and manage him never so little,
and you cannot relieve his discontent. And is it not well that it
should be so? Verily it is--if America be not a dream, and immortality
a delusion.

Lord Baltimore would perhaps have liked to see all his colonists
Catholics; but his experience of religious intolerance had not inflamed
him against other creeds than his own, as would have been the case with
a Spaniard; it seemed to awaken a desire to set tolerance an example.
Any one might join his community except felons and atheists; and as a
matter of fact, his assortment of colonists soon became as motley as
that of Williams in Providence. The landing of the first expedition on
an island in the Potomac was attended by the making and erecting by the
Jesuit priests of a rude cross, and the celebration of mass; but there
were even then more Protestants than Catholics in the party; and though
the leadership was Catholic for many years, it was not on account of
the numerical majority of persons of that faith. Episcopalians ejected
from New England, Puritans fleeing from the old country, Quakers and
Anabaptists who were unwelcome everywhere else, met with hospitality in
Maryland. Let them but believe in Jesus Christ, and all else was
forgiven them. Nevertheless, Catholicism was the religion of the
country. Its inhabitants might be likened to promiscuous guests at an
inn whose landlord made no criticisms on their beliefs, further than to
inscribe the Papal insignia on the signboard over his door. Thus
liberty was discriminated from license, and in the midst of tolerance
there was order.

The first settlement was made on a small creek entering the north side
of the Potomac. Here an Indian village already existed; but its
occupants were on the point of deserting it, and were glad to accept
payment from the colonists for the site which they had no further use
for. On the other hand, the colonists could avail themselves of the
wigwams just as they stood, and had their maize fields ready cleared.
Baltimore, meanwhile, through his agent (and brother) Leonard Calvert,
furnished them with all the equipment they needed; and so well was the
way smoothed before them, that the colony made progress ten times as
rapidly as Virginia had done. They called their new home St. Mary's;
and the date of its occupation was 1634. Their first popular assembly
met for legislation in the second month of the ensuing year. In that
and subsequent meetings they asserted their right of jurisdiction,
their right to enact laws, the freedom of "holy church": his lordship
gently giving them their head. In 1642, perhaps to disburden themselves
of some of their obligation to him, they voted him a subsidy. Almost
the only definite privilege which he seems to have retained was that of
pre-emption of lands. At this period (1643) all England was by the
ears, and Baltimore's hold upon his colony was relaxed. In Virginia and
the other colonies, which had governors of their own, the neglect of
the mother country gave them opportunity for progress; but the people
of Maryland, no longer feeling the sway of their non-resident
proprietor, and having no one else to look after them, became
disorderly; which would not have happened, had they been empowered to
elect a ruler from among themselves. Baltimore's enemies took advantage
of these disturbances to petition for his removal from the
proprietorship; but he was equal to the occasion; and by confirming his
colonists in all just liberties, with freedom of conscience in the
foreground, he composed their dissensions, and took away his enemies'
ground of complaint. In 1649, the legislature sat for the first time in
two branches, so that one might be a check upon the other. Upon this
principle all American legislatures are still formed.

But the reign of Cromwell in England gave occasion for sophistries in
Maryland. All other Englishmen, in the colonies or at home, were
members of a commonwealth; but Baltimore still claimed the Marylanders'
allegiance. On what grounds?--for since the king from whom he derived
his power was done away with, so must be the derivative power.
Baltimore stood between them and republicanism. To give edge to the
predicament, the colony was menaced by covetous Virginia on one hand,
and by fugitive Charles II., with a governor of his own manufacture, on
the other. Calamity seemed at hand.

In 1650, the year after Charles I.'s execution, the Parliament
appointed commissioners to bring royalist colonies into line; Maryland
was to be reannexed to Virginia; Bennett, then governor of Virginia,
and Clairborne, unseated Stone, Baltimore's lieutenant, appointed an
executive council, and ordered that burgesses were to be elected by
supporters of Cromwell only. The question of reannexation was referred
to Parliament. Baltimore protested that Maryland had been less royalist
than Virginia; and before the Parliament could decide what to do, it
was dissolved, carrying with it the authority of Bennett and
Clairborne. Stone now reappeared defiant; but the Virginians attacked
him, and he surrendered on compulsion. The Virginian government decreed
that no Roman Catholics could hereafter vote or be elected.

Baltimore, taking his stand on his charter, declared these doings
mutinous; and Cromwell supported him. Stone once more asserted himself;
but in the skirmish with the Virginians that followed, he was defeated,
yielded (he seems to have had no granite in his composition), and, with
his supporters, was ordered to be shot. His life was spared, however;
but Cromwell, again appealed to, refused to act. The ownership of
Maryland was therefore still undetermined. It was not until 1667 that
Baltimore and Bennett agreed to compromise their dispute. The boundary
between the two domains was maintained, but settlers from Virginia were
not to be disturbed in their holdings. The second year after Cromwell's
death, the representatives of Maryland met and voted themselves an
independent assembly, making Fendall, Baltimore's appointee, subject to
their will. Finally, being weary of turmoil, they made it felony to
alter what they had done. The colony was then abreast of Virginia in
political privileges, and had a population of about ten thousand, in
spite of its vicissitudes.

But the quiet, invincible Lord Baltimore was still to be reckoned with.
At the Restoration, he sent his deputy to the colony, which submitted
to his authority, and Fendall was convicted of treason for having
allowed the assembly to overrule him. A general amnesty was proclaimed,
however, and the kindliness of the government during the remainder of
the proprietor's undisputed sway attracted thousands of settlers from
all the nations of Europe. Between Baltimore and the people, a
give-and-take policy was established, one privilege being set against
another, so that their liberties were maintained, and his rights
recognized. Though he stood in his own person for all that was opposed
to democracy, he presided over a community which was essentially
democratic; and he had the breadth of mind to acknowledge that because
he owned allegiance to kings and popes, was no reason why others should
do so. Suum cuique. Could he but have gone a step further, and denied
himself the gratification of retaining his hard-earned proprietorship,
he would have been one of the really great men of history.

The ripple of events which we have recorded may seem too insignificant;
of still less import is the story of the efforts of Clairborne, from
1634: to 1647, to gain, or retain possession of Kent Island, in the
Chesapeake, on which he had "squatted" before Baltimore got his
charter. Yet, from another point of view, even slight matters may weigh
when they are related to the stirring of the elements which are to
crystallize into a nation. Maryland, like a bird half tamed, was ready
to fly away when the cage door was left open, and yet was not averse to
its easy confinement when the door was shut again. But, unlike the
bird, time made it fonder of liberty, instead of leading it to forget
it; and when the cage fell apart, it was at home in the free air.

The settlement of the Carolinas, during the twenty years or so from
1660 to 1680, presented features of singular grotesqueness. There was,
on one side, a vast wilderness covering the region now occupied by
North and South Carolina, and westward to the Pacific. It had been
nibbled at, for a hundred years, by Spaniards, French and English, but
no permanent hold had been got upon it. Here were thousands upon
thousands of square miles in which nature rioted unrestrained, with
semi-tropic fervor; the topography of which was unknown, and whose
character in any respect was a matter of pure conjecture. This
wilderness was on one side; on the other were a worthless king, a
handful of courtiers, and a couple of highly gifted doctrinaires, Lord
Shaftesbury and John Locke, the philosopher. We can picture Charles II.
lolling in his chair, with a map of the Americas spread out on his
knees, while the other gentlemen in big wigs and silk attire, and long
rapiers dangling at their sides, are grouped about him. "I'll give you
all south of Virginia," says he, indicating the territory with a sweep
of his long fingers. "Ashley, you and your friend Locke can draw up a
constitution, and stuff it full of your fine ideas; they sound well:
we'll see how they work. You shall be kings every man of you; and may
you like it no worse than I do! You'll have no France or Holland to
thwart you--only bogs and briers and a few naked blacks. Your charter
shall pass the seals to-morrow: and much good may it do you!"

So the theorists and the courtiers set out to subdue the untutored
savageness of nature with a paper preamble and diagrams and rules and
inhibitions, and orders of nobility and a college of heralds, and
institutions of slavery and serfdom, and definitions of freeholders and
landgraves, caciques and palatines; and specifications of fifths for
proprietors, fifths for the nobility, and the rest for the common herd,
who were never to be permitted to be anything but the common herd, with
no suffrage, no privileges, and no souls. All contingencies were
provided against, except the one contingency, not wholly unimportant,
that none of the proposals of the Model Constitution could be carried
into effect. Strange, that Ashley Cooper--as Lord Shaftesbury was
then--one of the most brilliant men in Europe, and John Locke, should
get together and draw squares over a sheet of paper, each representing
four hundred and eighty thousand acres, with a cacique and landgraves
and their appurtenances in each--and that they should fail to perceive
that corresponding areas would never be marked out in the pathless
forests, and that noblemen could not be found nor created to take up
their stand, like chessmen, each in his lonely and inaccessible morass
or mountain or thicket, and exercise the prerogatives of the paper
preamble over trees and panthers and birds of the air! How could men of
such radiant intelligence as Locke and Shaftesbury unquestionably were,
show themselves so radically ignorant of the nature of their fellowmen,
and of the elementary principles of colonization? The whole thing
reads, to-day, like some stupendous jest; yet it was planned in grave
earnest, and persons were found to go across the Atlantic and try to
make it work.

Lord Shaftesbury was one of the Hampshire Coopers, and the first earl.
He was a sort of English Voltaire: small and thin, nervous and
fractious, with a great cold brain, no affections and no illusions; he
had faith in organizations, but none in man; was destitute of
compunctions, careless of conventions and appearances, cynical,
penetrating, and frivolous. He was a skeptic in religion, but a devotee
of astrology; easily worried in safety, but cool and audacious in
danger. He despised if he did not hate the people, and regarded kings
as an unavoidable nuisance; the state, he thought, was the aristocracy,
whose business it was to keep the people down and hold the king in
check. His career--now supporting the royalists, now the roundheads,
now neither--seems incoherent and unprincipled; but in truth he was one
of the least variable men of his time; he held to his course, and king
and parliament did the tacking. He was an incorruptible judge, though
he took bribes; and an unerring one, though he disregarded forms of
law. He was tried for treason, and acquitted; joined the Monmouth
conspiracy, and escaped to Holland, where he died at the age of
sixty-two. What he lacked was human sympathies, which are the beginning
of wisdom; and this deficiency it was, no doubt, that led him into the
otherwise incomprehensible folly of the Carolina scheme.

Locke could plead the excuse of being totally unfamiliar with practical
life; he was a philosopher of abstractions, who made an ideal world to
fit his theories about it. He could write an essay on the
Understanding, but was unversed in Common-sense. His nature was more
calm and normal than Shaftesbury's, but in their intellectual
conclusions they were not dissimilar. The views about the common people
which Sir William Berkeley expressed with stupid brutality, they stated
with punctual elegance. They were well mated for the purpose in hand,
and they performed it with due deliberation and sobriety. It was not
until five years after the grant was made that the constitution was
written and sealed. It achieved an instantaneous success in England,
much as a brilliant novel might, in our time; and the authors were
enthusiastically belauded. The proprietors--Albemarle, Craven,
Clarendon, Berkeley, Sir William Berkeley, Sir John Colleton and Sir
George Carteret, and Shaftesbury himself--began to look about for their
serfs and caciques, and to think of their revenues. Meanwhile the
primeval forest across three thousand miles of ocean laughed with its
innumerable leaves, and waved its boughs in the breath of the spirit of
liberty. The laws of the study went forth to battle with the laws of
nature.

Ignorant of these courtly and scholarly proceedings, a small knot of
bonafide settlers had built their huts on Albemarle Sound, and had for
some years been living there in the homeliest and most uneducated peace
and simplicity. Some had come from Virginia, some from New England, and
others from the island of Bermuda. They had their little assembly and
their governor Stevens, their humble plantations, their modest trade,
their beloved solitudes, and the plainest and least obtrusive laws
imaginable. They paddled up and down their placid bayous and rivers in
birch-bark canoes; they shot deer and 'possums for food and panthers
for safety, they loved their wives and begat their children, they wore
shirts and leggins of deerskin like the Indians, and they breathed the
pure wholesomeness of the warm southern air. When to these backwoods
innocents was borne from afar the marvelous rumors of the
silk-stockinged and lace-ruffled glories, originated during an idle
morning in the king's dressing-room, which were to transfigure their
forest into trim gardens and smug plantations, surrounding royal
palaces and sumptuous hunting pavilions, perambulated by uniformed
officials, cultivated by meek armies of serfs, looking up from their
labors only to doff their caps to lordly palatines and lily-fingered
ladies with high heels and low corsages: when they tried to picture to
themselves their solemn glades and shadow-haunted streams and inviolate
hills, their eyries of eagles and lairs of stag and puma, the savage
beauty of their perilous swamps, all the wild magnificence of this pure
home of theirs--metamorphosed by royal edict into a magnified
Versailles, in which lutes and mandolins should take the place of the
wolf's howl and the panther's scream, the keen scent of the pine balsam
be replaced by the reek of musk and patchouli, the honest sanctity of
their couches of fern give way to the embroidered corruption of a fine
lady's bedchamber, the simple vigor of their pioneer parliament bewitch
itself into a glittering senate chamber, where languid chancellors
fingered their golden chains and exchanged witty epigrams with
big-wigged, snuff-taking cavaliers:--when they attempted to house these
strange ideas in their unsophisticated brains, they must have stared at
one another with a naive perplexity which slowly broadened their tanned
and bearded visages into contagious grins. They looked at their hearty,
clear-eyed wives, and watched the gambols of their sturdy children, and
shook their heads, and turned to their work once more.

The first movements of the new dispensation took the form of trying to
draw the colonists together into towns, of reviving the Navigation
Acts, of levying taxes on their infant commerce, and in general of
tying fetters of official red tape on the brawny limbs of a primitive
and natural civilization. The colony was accused of being the refuge of
outlaws and traitors, rogues and heretics; and Sir William Berkeley,
governor of Virginia, one of the proprietors under the Model
Constitution, was deputed to make as much mischief in the virgin
settlement as he could.

The colonists numbered about four thousand, spread over a large
territory; they did not want to desert their palmetto thatched cabins
and strenuously-cleared acres; they disliked crowding into towns; they
saw no justice in paying to intangible and alien proprietors a penny
tax on their tobacco exports to New England--though they paid it
nevertheless. They particularly objected to the interference of
Governor Berkeley, for they knew him well. And when the free election
of their assembly was attacked, they sent emissaries to England to
remonstrate, and meanwhile, John Culpepper leading, and without waiting
for the return of their emissaries, they arose and wiped out the things
and persons that were objectionable, and then returned serenely to
their business. They did not fly into a passion, and froth at the
mouth, and massacre and torture; but quietly and inflexibly, with
hardly a keener flash from their fearless eyes, they put things to
rights, and thought no more about it.

Such treasonable proceedings, however, fluttered the council chambers
in London sorely, and stout John Culpepper, who believed in popular
liberty and was not afraid to say so, went to England to justify what
had been done. He was arrested and put on trial, though he demanded to
be tried, if at all, in the place where the offense was committed. The
intent of his adversaries was not to give him justice, but simply to
hang him; and why go to the trouble and expense of carrying him to
Carolina to do that? He went near to becoming a martyr, did stout John;
but, unexpectedly, Shaftesbury, who might believe in despotism, but who
fretted to behold injustice, undertook his defense and brought him out
clear. The rest of the "rebels" were amnestied the following year,
1681. But one Seth Sothel, who had bought out Lord Clarendon's
proprietary rights, was sent out as governor; and after escaping from
the Algerine pirates, who captured and kept him for a couple of years,
he arrived at Albemarle, commissioned, as Bancroft admirably puts it,
to "Transform a log cabin into a baronial castle, a negro slave into a
herd of leet-men." Sothel was not long in perceiving that this was
beyond his powers, but he could steal: and so he did for a few years,
when the colonists, thinking he had enough, unseated him, tried him,
and sentenced him to a year's exile and to nevermore be officer of
theirs.

These planters of North Carolina were good Americans from the
beginning, endowed with a courage and love of liberty which foretold
the spirit of Washington's army,--and a religious tolerance which did
not prevent them from listening with sympathy and approval to the
spiritual harangues of Fox, the Quaker, who sojourned among them with
gratifying results. Their prejudice against towns continued, and one
must walk far to visit them, with only marks on the forest trees to
guide. They were inveterately contented, and having emancipated
themselves from the blight of the Model Constitution, rapidly became
prosperous. The only effect of Messrs. Locke and Shaftesbury's scheme
of an aristocratic Utopia was to make the settlers conscious of their
strength and devoted to their freedom. Indeed, the North Carolinians
were in great part men who had not only fled from the oppressions of
England, but had found even the mild restraints of the other colonies
irksome.

The fate of the Model in South Carolina was similar, though the
preliminary experiences were different. When Joseph West, agent for the
proprietors, and William Sayle, experienced in colonizing, took three
shiploads of emigrants to the junction of the Ashley and Cooper rivers,
about twenty miles south of latitude 33°, they had a copy of the Model
with them. But the first thing they did after getting ashore was to
vote that its provisions were impracticable, and to revise it to such a
degree that, when it was sent over to England for approval, its authors
did not recognize their work, and disowned it. But the settlers
constituted their assembly on the general lines which might now be
called American, and put up their huts, in 1672, on the ground where
now stands Charleston. The climate was too hot for white labor, and the
timely arrival of negro slaves was welcome; in a few years they doubled
the number of the whites. The staple crops of the southern plantations
needed much more work than those of New England and the north, and
this, as well as the preference of the negroes themselves for the
warmer climates, determined the distribution of black slavery on the
Atlantic coast.

Dutch settlers presently joined the English; a Scotch-Irish colony at
Port Royal was set upon by the Spaniards, who, in accordance with the
characteristic Spanish policy, massacred the inhabitants and burned the
houses. But later the revocation by Louis XIV. of the amnesty to
Huguenots caused the latter to fly their country and disperse
themselves over Europe and America; no higher or finer class of men and
women ever joined the ranks of exile, and they were everywhere
welcomed. Colonies of them settled all along the Atlantic seaboard; and
around Charleston many from Languedoc found a congenial home, and
became a valuable and distinguished part of the population. America
could not have been complete without the leaven of the heroic French
Protestants.

Meanwhile the proprietors were gradually submitting, with no good
grace, however, to the inevitable. Their Model remained a
model--something never to be put to practical use. On paper was it
born, and on paper should it remain forever. The proprietors were
kings, by grace of Charles II., but they had neither army nor navy, and
their subjects declined to be serfs. They declined into the status of
land speculators; the governors whom they sent out did nothing but fill
their pockets and let the people have the rest. At last, it was enough
for the proprietors to suggest anything for the people to negative it,
whether it were good or bad. They not only avowed their natural right
to do as they pleased, but deemed it due to their self-respect not to
do what was pleasing to their tinsel sovereigns in London. And finally,
when Colleton, one of the sovereigns in question, tried to declare
martial law in the colony, on the plea of danger from Indians or
Spanish, the indomitable freemen treated him as their brethren at
Albemarle had treated Sothel. The next year saw William and Mary on the
English throne; Shaftesbury had died seven years before; and the Great
Model subsided without a bubble into the vacuum of historical
absurdities.

We left Virginia awaiting the return of the envoys who had gone to ask
Charles for justice and protection against the tyranny of Berkeley.
Charles, as we know, first promised the reforms, and then broke his
promise, as all Stuarts must. But before the envoys could return with
their heavy news, there had been stirring things done and suffered in
Virginia.

The character of Berkeley is as detestable as any known in the annals
of the American colonies. Many of his acts, and all the closing scenes
of his career, seem hardly compatible with moral sanity; in our day,
when science is so prone to find the explanation of crime in insanity,
he would undoubtedly have been adjudged to the nearest asylum. In his
early years, he had been stupid and illiberal, but nothing worse; in
his old age, he seemed to seek out opportunities of wickedness and
outrage, and at last he gave way to transports which could only be
likened to those of a fiend from the Pit, permitted for a season to
afflict the earth. He was as base as he was wicked; a thief, and
perjured, as well as an insatiable murderer. The only trait that seems
to ally him with manhood is itself animal and repulsive. He had wholly
abandoned any pretense of self-control; and in some of the outbursts of
his frenzy he seems to have become insensible even to the suggestions
of physical fear. But this can hardly be accorded the name of courage;
rather is it to be attributed to the suffusion of blood to the brain
which drives the Malay to run amuck.

Virginia had been nurtured in liberty, and was ill prepared for
despotism. On the contrary, she was almost ready to doubt the wisdom or
convenience of any government whatever, except such as was
spontaneously furnished by the generous and magnanimous instincts of
her people. There were no towns, and none of the vice and selfishness
which crowded populations engender. Roads, bridges, public works of any
sort were unknown; the population seldom met except at races or to
witness court proceedings. The great planters lived in comparative
comfort, but they were as much in love with freedom as were the common
people. This state of things was the outcome of the growth of fifty
years; and most of the eight thousand inhabitants of the colony were
born on the soil, and loved it as the only home they knew.

The chief injury they had suffered was from the depredations of the
Indians, who, on their side, could plead that they had received less
than justice at the colonists' hands. Border raids and killings became
more and more frequent and alarming; the savages had learned the use of
muskets, and were good marksmen. They built a fort on the Maryland
border, and for a time resisted siege operations; and when at length
some of the chiefs came out to parley, they were seized and shot. The
rest of the Indian garrison escaped by night, and slaughtered
promiscuously all whom they could surprise along the countryside. A
force was raised to check them, and avenge the murders; but before it
could come in contact with them, Berkeley sent out a peremptory summons
that they should return.

What was the explanation of this extraordinary step? Simply that the
Governor had the monopoly of the Indian trade, which was very valuable,
and would not permit the Indians who traded with him to be driven away.
In order to supply his already overloaded pockets with money, he was
willing to see the red men murder with impunity, and with the
brutalities of torture and outrage, the men, women and children of his
own race. But the Indians themselves seem admirable in contrast with
the inhumanity of this gray-haired, wine-bloated, sordid cavalier of
seventy.

The troops on which the safety of the colonists depended reluctantly
retired. Immediately the savages renewed their attacks; three hundred
settlers were killed. Still Berkeley refused to permit anything to be
done; forts might be erected on the borders, but these, besides being
of great expense to the people, were wholly useless for their defense,
inasmuch as the savages could without difficulty slip by them under
cover of the forest. The raids continued, and the plantations were
abandoned, till not one in seven remained. The inhabitants were
terror-stricken; no man's life was safe. At last permission was asked
that the people might raise and equip a force at their own expense, in
the exercise of the universal right of self-protection; but even this
was violently forbidden by the Governor, who threatened punishment on
any who should presume to take arms against them. All traffic with them
had also been interdicted; but it was known that Berkeley himself
continued his trading with those whose hands were red with the blood of
the wives, fathers and children of Virginia.

Finally, in 1676, the report came that an army of Indians were
approaching Jamestown. Unless resistance were at once made, there
seemed nothing to prevent the extinction of the colony. Berkeley,
apparently for no better reason than that he would not recede from a
position once taken, adhered to his order that nothing should be done.

There was at that time in Virginia a young Englishman of about thirty,
named Nathaniel Bacon. He was descended from good ancestors, and had
received a thorough education, including terms in the Inns of Court. He
was intellectual, thoughtful, and self-contained, with a clear mind, a
generous nature, and the power of winning and controlling men. He had
arrived in the colony a little more than a year before, and had been
chosen to the council; he was wealthy and aristocratic, yet a known
friend of the people. Born in 1642, he was familiar with revolutions,
and had formed his own opinions as to the rights of man. He had a
plantation on the site of the present city of Richmond; and during the
late Indian troubles, had lost his overseer. Coming down on his affairs
to Jamestown, he fell into talk with some friends, who suggested
crossing the river to see some of the volunteers who had come together
for defense. These men were in a mood of excited exasperation at the
sinister conduct of the governor, and ready to follow extreme counsels
had they had a leader with the boldness and ability to put himself at
their head.

The tall, slender figure and grave features of Bacon were well-known.
As he advanced toward the troop of stalwart young fellows, who were
sullenly discussing the situation, he was recognized; and something
seems to have suggested to them that he was come with a purpose.
Conclusions are sudden at such times, and impulses contagious as fire.
He was the leader whom they sought. "A Bacon--a Bacon!" shouted some
one; and instantly the cry was taken up. They thronged around him,
welcoming him, cheering him, exclaiming that they would follow him,
that with them at his back he should save the country in spite of the
governor! They were fiery and emotional, after the manner of the sons
of the Old Dominion, and the wrongs of many kinds which had long been
rankling in their hearts now demanded to be requited by some action--no
matter how daring. Virginians never shrank from danger.

Bacon had been wholly unprepared for this outburst; but he had a
strong, calm soul, a ready brain, and the blood of youth. He knew what
the colony had endured, and that it had nothing to hope from the
present government. He had come to America after making the European
tour, intending only a visit; but he had grown attached to Virginia,
and now that chance had put this opportunity to help her, he resolved
to accept it. He would throw in his lot with these spirited and
fearless young patriots--the first men in America who had the right to
call the country their own. Standing before them, with his head bared,
and in a voice that all could hear, he solemnly pledged himself to lead
them against the Indians, and then aid them to recover the liberties
which had been wrested from them. "And do you," he added, "pledge
yourselves to me!" His words were heard with tumultuous enthusiasm, and
a round-robin was signed, binding all to stick to their captain and to
one another. That is a document which history would fain have preserved.

With an army of three hundred Virginians, Bacon set forward against the
Indians. Meanwhile Berkeley, enraged at this slight on his authority,
called some troops together and despatched them to bring back "the
rebels." Thus was seen the singular spectacle of a government force
marching to apprehend men who were risking their lives freely to repel
a danger imminent and common to all.

But Berkeley was going too far. Bacon's act had the sympathy of all
except such as were as corrupt as the governor, and the men of the
lower counties revolted, and demanded that the long scandal of the
continuous assembly should cease forthwith. Berkeley was intimidated;
he had not believed that any spirit was left in the colony; he recalled
his men, and consented to the assembly's dissolution. By the time Bacon
and his three hundred got back from their successful campaign, the
writs for a new election were out; and he was unanimously chosen
burgess from Henrico. The assembly of which he thus became a member was
for the most part in sympathy with him; and though, for the benefit of
the record, censure was passed upon the irregularity of his campaign,
and he was required to apologize for fighting without a commission, yet
he was at the same time caressed and praised on all sides, returned to
the council, and dubbed the darling of Virginia's hopes. The assembly
then proceeded to undo all the evil and clean out all the rottenness
that had disgraced the conduct of their predecessors. Taxes, church
tyranny, restriction of the franchise, illegal assessments, fees, and
liquor-dealing were done away with; two magistrates were proved thieves
and disfranchised, and trade with Indians was for the present stopped.
Bacon received a commission; but Berkeley refused to sign it; and when
Bacon appealed to the country, and returned with five hundred men to
demand his rights, the governor was beside himself with fury.

Private letters and other documents, made public only long after this
date, are the authority for what occurred; but though certain facts are
given, explanations are seldom available. Berkeley appears to have been
holding court when Bacon and his followers appeared; it is said that he
ran out and confronted them, tore his shirt open and declared that
sooner should they shoot him than he would sign the commission of that
rebel; and the next moment, changing his tactics, he offered to settle
the issue between Bacon and himself by a duel. All this does not sound
like the acts of a man in his sober senses. It seems probable either
that the old reprobate was intoxicated, or that his mind was disordered
by passion. Bacon, of course, declined to match his youthful vigor
against his decrepit enemy, as the latter must have known he would: and
told him temperately that the commission he demanded was to enable him
to repel the savages who were murdering their fellow colonists
unchecked. The governor, after some further parley, again altered his
behavior, and now overpowered Bacon with maudlin professions of esteem
for his patriotic energy; signed his commission, and sent dispatches to
England warmly commending him. A formal amnesty, obliterating all past
acts of the popular champion and his supporters which could be
construed as irregular, was drawn up and ratified by the governor; and
the clouds which so long had lowered over Virginia seemed to have been
at last in the deep bosom of the ocean buried. To those whom
coincidences interest it will be significant that this victory for the
people was won on the 4th of July, 1676.

Operations against the Indians were now vigorously resumed; but
Berkeley had not yet completed the catalogue of his iniquities. Bacon's
back was scarcely turned, before he violated the amnesty which he had
just ratified, and tried to rouse public sentiment against the
liberator. In this, however, he signally failed, as also in his attempt
to raise a levy to arrest him; and frightened at the revelation of his
weakness, he fled in a panic to Accomack, a peninsula on the eastern
side of Chesapeake Bay. Word of his proceedings had in the meantime
been conveyed to Bacon by Drummond, former governor of North Carolina,
and Lawrence. "Shall he who commissioned us to protect the country from
the heathen, betray our lives?" said Bacon. "I appeal to the king and
parliament!" He established himself in Williamsburg; at Drummond's
suggestion Berkeley's flight was taken to mean his withdrawal from the
governorship--which, at any rate, had now passed its appointed
limit--and a summons was sent out to the gentlemen of Virginia to meet
for consultation as to the future conduct of the colony. It was at this
juncture that the envoys returned from England, with the dark news that
Charles had refused all relief.

At the conference, after full discussion, it was voted that the colony
take the law into their own hands, and maintain themselves not only
against the Indians and Berkeley, but if need were against England
herself. "I fear England no more than a broken straw," said Sarah
Drummond, snapping a stick in her hands as she spoke: the women of
Virginia were as resolved as the men. Pending these contingencies,
Bacon with his little army again set out in pursuit of the Indians;
hearing which, Berkeley, with a train of mercenaries which he had
contrived to collect, crossed from Accomack and landed at Jamestown,
where he repeated his refrain of "rebels!" He promised freedom to
whatever slaves of the colony would enlist on his side, and fortified
the little town. The crews of some English ships in the harbor assisted
him; and in the sequel these tars were the only ones of his rabble that
stayed by him. The neighborhood was alarmed, fearing any kind of
enormity, and messengers rode through the woods post haste, and swam
the rivers, in the sultry September weather, to find and recall their
defenders, and summon them to resist a worse foe than the red man.
Before they could reach the young leader, the Indians had been routed,
the army disbanded, and Bacon, with a handful of followers, was on his
way to his plantation. They were weary with the fatigues of the
campaign, but on learning that the prime source of the troubles was
intrenched in Jamestown, and that "man, woman and child" were in peril
of slavery, they turned their horses' heads southeastward, and galloped
to the rescue. They gathered recruits on their way--no one could resist
the eloquence of Bacon--and halting at such of the plantations as were
owned by royalist sympathizers, they compelled their wives to mount and
accompany them as hostages. This indicates to what extremes the
violence of Berkeley was expected to go. It was evening when they came
in sight of the enemy. But the moon was already aloft, and as the
western light faded, her mellow radiance flooded the scene, giving it
the semblance of peace. But the impatient Virginians wished to attack
at once; and a lesser man than Bacon might have yielded to their
urging. Knowing, however, that the country was with him, and feeling
that the enemy must sooner or later succumb, he would not win by a
dashing, bloody exploit what time was sure to give him. He ordered an
intrenchment to be dug, and prepared for a siege. But there was no lust
for battle in the disorderly and incoherent force which the frantic
appeals and reckless promises of the governor had assembled; they were
beaten already, and could not be induced to make a sortie. Desertions
began, and all the objurgations, supplications and melodramatic
extravaganzas of Berkeley were impotent to stop them; the more shrilly
he shrieked, the faster did his sorry aggregation melt away. When it
became evident that there would soon be none left save himself and the
sailors, he ceased his blustering, and scuttled off toward Gloucester
and the Rappahannock.

Bacon, Drummond, Lawrence and their men occupied the abandoned town, in
which some of them owned houses, and burned it to the ground. The act
was deliberate; the town records were first removed; and the men who
had most to lose by the conflagration were the first to set the torch.

Jamestown at that time contained hardly twenty buildings all told; but
it was the first settlement of the Dominion, and sentiment would fain
have preserved it. A mossy ruin, draped in vines, is all that remains
of it now. The ascertainable causes of its destruction seem inadequate;
yet the circumstances show that it could not have been done in mere
wantonness. Civilized warfare permits the destruction of the enemy's
property; but the enemy had retreated, and the expectation was that he
would never return. That Bacon had reasons, his previous record
justifies us in believing; but what they were is matter of conjecture.
As it is, the burning of Jamestown is the only passage in his brief and
gallant career which can be construed as a blemish upon it.
Unfortunately, it was, also, all but the final one.

He pursued Berkeley, and the army of the latter, instead of fighting,
marched over to him with a unanimity which left the governor almost
without a companion in his chagrin. The whole of Virginia was now in
Bacon's hand; he had no foes; he was called Deliverer; he had never met
reverse; he was a man of intellect, judgment and honor, and he was in
the prime of his youth; in such a country, beloved, and supported by
such a people, what might he not have hoped to achieve? Men like him
are rare; in a country just emerging into political consciousness, he
was doubly precious. There was no one to take his place; the return of
Berkeley meant all that was imaginable of evil; and yet Bacon was to
die, and Berkeley was to return.

In the trenches before Jamestown, Bacon had contracted the seeds of a
fever which now, in the hour of his triumph, overcame him. After a
short struggle he succumbed; and his men, fearing, apparently, that the
ghoulish revenge of the old governor might subject his remains to
insult, sunk his body in the river; and none know where lie the bones
of the first American patriot who died in arms against oppression. His
worth is proved by the confusion and disorganization which ensued upon
his death. Cheeseman, Hansford, Wilford and Drummond could not make
head against disaster. On the governor's side, Robert Beverly developed
the qualities of a leader, and a series of small engagements left the
patriots at his mercy. Berkeley was re-established in his place; and
then began the season of his revenge.

His victims were the gentlemen of Virginia; the flower of the province.
He had no mercy; his sole thought was to add insult to the bitterness
of death. He would not spare their lives; he would not shoot them; they
must perish on the gallows, not as soldiers, but as rebels. When a
young wife pleaded for her gallant husband, declaring that it was she
who persuaded him to join the patriotic movement, Berkeley denied her
prayer with coarse brutality. When Drummond was brought before him, he
assured him of his pleasure in their meeting: "You shall be hanged in
half an hour." One can see that mean, flushed countenance, ravaged by
time and intemperance, with bloodshot eyes, gloating over the despair
of his foes, and searching for means to torture their minds while
destroying their bodies. Trial by jury was not quick or sure enough for
Berkeley; he condemned them by court-martial and the noose was round
their necks at once. Their families were stripped of their property and
sent adrift to subsist on charity. In his bloodthirstiness, he never
forgot his pecuniary advantage, and his thievish fingers grasped all
the valuables that his murderous instincts brought within his power.
But the spectacle is too revolting for contemplation.

"He would have hanged half the country if we had let him alone," was
the remark of a member of the assembly. It was voted that the execution
should cease; more than two-score men had already been strangled for
defending their homes and resisting oppression. Even Charles in London
was annoyed when he heard of the wasteful malignity of "the old fool,"
and sent word of his disapproval and displeasure. A successor was sent
over to supersede him; but he at first refused to go at the king's
command, though he had ever used the king's name as the warrant for his
crimes. He had sold powder and shot to the Indians to kill his own
people with; he had appropriated the substance of widows and orphans
whom he had made such; he had punished by public whipping all who were
reported to have spoken against him; he forbade the printing-press; but
all had been done "for the King". And now he resisted the authority of
the king himself. But Charles, for once, was determined, and Berkeley,
under the disgrace of severe reprimand, was forced to go. The joy bells
clashed out the people's delight as the ship which carried him dropped
down the harbor, and the firing of guns was like an anticipation of our
celebration of Independence Day. He stood on the poop, in the beauty of
the morning, shaking out curses from his trembling hands, in helpless
hatred of the fair land and gallant people that he had done his utmost
to make miserable. In England, the king would have none of him, and he
met with nothing but rebuffs and condemnation on all sides. The power
which he had misused was forever gone; he was old, and shattered in
constitution; he was disgraced, flouted, friendless and alone. He died
soon after his arrival, of mortification; he had lived only to do evil,
and to withhold him from it was to take his life away.

It is not the function of the historian to condemn. Berkeley was by
birth and training an aristocrat and a cavalier, and he was a creature
of his age and station. He had been taught to believe that the
patrician is of another flesh and blood than the plebeian; that
authority can be enforced only by tyranny; that the only right is that
of birth, and of the strongest. He was early placed in a position where
every personal indulgence was made easy to him, where there was none to
call in question his authority, and where there was temptation to
assert authority by oppression, and by arrogating absolute license to
act as the whim prompted, and to lay hands on whatever he coveted. Add
to these conditions a nature congenitally without generous instincts, a
narrow brain, and a sensual temperament, and we have gone far to
account for the phenomenon which Berkeley finally, in his approaching
senility, presented. He was the type of the worst traits that caused
England ultimately to forfeit America; the concentration of whatever is
opposite to popular liberties. His deeds must be execrated; but we
cannot put him beyond the pale of human nature, or deny that under
different circumstances he would have been a better man. We may admit,
too, that, in the wisdom of Providence, he was placed where, by doing
so much mischief, he was involuntarily the cause of more good than he
could ever willingly have accomplished. He taught the people how to
hate despotism, and how to struggle against it. He wrought a mutual
understanding and sympathy between the upper and lower orders; he led
them to define to their own minds what things are indispensable to the
existence of true democracy. These are some of the uses which he, and
such as he, in their own despite subserved. He and the young Bacon were
mortal foes; but he, by opposing Bacon, and murdering his friends,
aided the cause for which they laid down their lives.

After his departure there ensued a period of ten years or more, during
which the pressure upon Virginia seemed rather to grow heavier than to
lighten. The acts of Bacon's assembly were repealed; all the former
abuses were restored; the public purse was shamelessly robbed; the
suffrage was restricted; the church was restored to power. In 1677 the
Dominion became the property of one Culpepper, who had the title of
governor for life; and the restraints, such as they were, of its
existence as a royal colony were removed. But Culpepper's course was so
corrupt as to necessitate his removal, and in 1684 the king resumed his
sway. James II. reached the English throne the following year, and his
persecutions of his enemies in England gave good citizens to America.
But the Virginians, who could be wronged and oppressed, but never
crushed, protested against the arbitrary use of the king's prerogative;
they were punished for their temerity, but rose more determined from
the struggle. No man could be sent to Virginia who was strong enough to
destroy its resolve for liberty.

And now the English Revolution was at hand; and we are to inquire what
influence the new dispensation was to have on the awakening national
spirit of the American colonies.



CHAPTER SEVENTH

QUAKER, YANKEE, AND KING


The American principle, simple in that its perfection is human liberty,
is of complex make. It is the sum of the ways in which a man may
legitimately be free. But neither Pilgrims, Puritans, New Amsterdamers,
Virginians, Carolinians nor Marylanders were free in all ways. Even the
Providence people had their limitations. It is not meant, merely, that
the old world still kept a grip on them: their several systems were
intrinsically incomplete. Some of them put religious liberty in the
first place; others, political; but each had its inconsistency, or its
shortcoming. None had gone quite to the root of the matter. What was
that root?--or, let us say, the mother lode, of which these were
efferent veins?

The Pilgrims and Puritans, heretics in Episcopalian England, had
escaped from their persecution, but had banished heretics in their
turn. Tranquil Lord Baltimore having laid the burden of his doubts at
the foot of God's vicegerent on earth, had sought no further, and was
indifferent as to what other poor mortals might choose to think they
thought about the unknown things. Roger Williams' charity, based on the
dogma of free conscience, drew the line only at atheists. The other
colonists, since their salient contention was on the lower ground of
civil emancipation and self-direction, are not presently considered.

But, to the assembly of religious radicals, there enters a plain Man in
Leather Breeches, and sees fetters on the limbs of all of them. "Does
thee call it freedom, Friend Winthrop," says he, "to fear contact with
such as believe otherwise than thee does? Can truth fear aught? And
fear, is it not bondage? As for thee, George Calvert, thee has
delivered up thine immortal soul into the keeping of a man no different
from what thee thyself is, so to escape the anxious seat; but the dead
also are free of anxiety, and thy bondage is most like unto death. Thee
calls thy colony folk free, because thee lets them believe what they
list; but they do but follow what their fathers taught them, who got it
from theirs; which is to be in bondage to the past. And here is friend
Roger, who makes private conscience free; but what is private
conscience but the private reasonings whereby a man convinceth himself?
and how shall he call his conviction the truth, since all truth is one,
but the testimony of no man's private conscience is the same as
another's? Nay, how does thee know that the atheist, whom thee
excludes, is further from the truth than thee thyself is? Truly, I hear
the clanking of the chains on ye all; but if ye will accept the Inner
Light, then indeed shall ye know what freedom is!"

This Man in Leather Breeches, who also wears his hat in the king's
presence, is otherwise known as George Fox, the Leicestershire weaver's
son, the Quaker. In his youth he was much troubled in spirit concerning
mankind, their nature and destiny, and the purpose of God concerning
them. He wandered in lonely places, and fasted, and was afflicted; he
sought help and light from all, but there was none could enlighten him.
But at last light came to him, even out of the bosom of his own
darkness; and he saw that human learning is but vanity, since within a
man's self, will he but look for it, abides a great Inner Light, which
changeth not, and is the same in all; being, indeed, the presence of
the Spirit of God in His creature, a constant guide and revelation,
withheld from none, uniting and equalizing all; for what, in comparison
with God, are the distinctions of rank and wealth, or of
learning?--Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and
these things shall be added unto you. In the lowest of men, not less
than in such as are called greatest, burns this lamp of Divine Truth,
and it shall shine for the hind as brightly as for the prince. In its
rays, the trappings of royalty are rags, jewels are dust and ashes, the
lore of science, folly; the disputes of philosophers, the crackling of
thorns under the pot. By the Inner Light alone can men be free and
equal, true sons of God, heirs of a liberty which can never be taken
away, since bars confine not the spirit, nor do tortures or death of
the body afflict it. So said George Fox and his followers; and their
lives bore witness to their words.

The Society of Friends took its rise not from a discovery--for Fox
himself held the Demon of Socrates, and similar traditional phenomena,
to be identical with the Inner Light, or voice of the Spirit--but
rather in the recognition of the universality of something which had
heretofore been regarded as exceptional and extraordinary. In the
Seventeenth Century there was a general revolt of the oppressed against
oppression, declaring itself in all phases of the outer and inner life;
of these, there must needs be one interior to all the rest, and
Quakerism seems to have been it. It was a revolution within
revolutions; it saw in the man's own self the only tyrant who could
really enslave him; and by bringing him into the direct presence of
God, it showed him the way to the only real emancipation. Historically,
it was the vital element in all other emancipating movements; it was
their logical antecedent: the hidden spring feeding all their rivers
with the water of life. It enables us to analyze them and gauge their
values; it is their measure and plummet. And this, not because it is
the final or the highest word justifying the ways of God to man--for it
has not proved to be so: but because it indicated, once for all, in
what direction the real solution of the riddle of man was to be sought:
a riddle never to be fully solved, but forever approximately guessed.
Quakerism has not maintained its relative position in religious
thought; but it was the finest perception of its day, and in the
turmoil of the time it fulfilled its purpose. Probably its best effect
was the development it gave to the humbler element of society--to the
yeomen and laborers; affording them the needed justification for the
various demands for recognition that they were urging. Puritanism
banished Quakers, and even hanged them; but the Quaker was the
Puritan's spiritual father, although he knew it not. And therefore the
Quaker, who was among the last to appear in America as a settler in
virgin soil, had a right thereto prior to any one of the others. There
must be a soul before there can be a body.

On the other hand, a soul without a body is not adapted to life in this
world; and an America peopled exclusively by Quakers would have been
unsatisfactory. It is a prevailing tendency of man, having hit upon a
truth, to begin to theorize upon it, and, as the phrase is, run it into
the ground. Quakers would not fight, would not take an oath, would not
baptize, or wear mourning, or flatter the senses with pictures and
statues. A Quaker would resist evil and violence only by enlightening
them. He would not be taxed for measures or objects which he did not
approve. He could see but one way of reforming the world, and thought
that God was equally circumscribed in His methods. But though the
leaven may make bread wholesome, we cannot subsist on leaven alone. The
essence of Americanism may be in a Quaker, but he is far from being a
complete American, and therefore he was fain to take his place only as
a noble ingredient in that wonderful mixture. By degrees, the
singularities which distinguished him were softened; his thee and thy
yielded to the common forms of speech; his drab suit altered its cut
and hue; his hat came off occasionally; his women abated the rigor of
their poke bonnets; he was able to say to the enemy of his country,
"Friend, thee is standing just where I am going to shoot." The
disintegration of his individuality set free the good that was in him
to permeate surrounding society; his fellow flowers in the garden were
more beautiful and fragrant for his sake.

When persecution of Quakers was at its worst, they became almost
dehumanized, attaching more value to their willingness to endure
ill-usage than to the spiritual principle for avouching which they were
ill-used. Many persons--such is the oddity of human nature--were drawn
to the sect for love of the persecution; and gave way to extravagances
such as Fox would have been the first to denounce. But when toleration
began, these excesses ceased, and they bethought themselves to make a
home in the wilderness of their own. There was room enough. George Fox
returned from his pilgrimage to the Atlantic colonies in 1674, with
good accounts of the resources of the new country; and the owner of New
Jersey sold half of it to John Fenwick for a thousand pounds; and the
next year the latter went there with many Friends, and picked out a
pleasant spot on the east bank of the Delaware for the first
settlement, to which he gave the name of Salem. It was at this juncture
that William Penn became, with two others, assigns of the proprietor of
the colony, and thus took the first step toward assuming full
responsibility for it. He did not, however, personally visit America
till seven years later.

Penn was the son of an English admiral: not the kind of timber,
therefore, out of which one would have supposed a great apostle of
non-resistance could be made. He was brought up to the use of ample
wealth, and his training and education were aristocratic. After leaving
Oxford, he made the grand tour, and came home a finished young man of
the world, with the pleasures and rewards of life before him. He had
good brains and solid qualities, and the old admiral had high hopes of
him. No doubt he would have made a very good figure in the English
world of fashion; but destiny had another career marked out for him.

The plain Man with the Leather Breeches got hold of him; and all the
objurgations, threats, and even the act of disinheritance of the
admiral were powerless to extricate him from that grasp. Penn had found
something which seemed to him more precious than rubies, and he was
quite as resolute as the old hero of the Navy. Penn could endure the
beating and the being turned into the streets, but he could not stop
his ears and eyes to the voice and light of God in his soul. He did not
care to conquer another Jamaica, but he passionately desired to
minister to the spiritual good of his fellow creatures. He was of a
sociable and cheerful disposition; he could disarm his adversary in a
duel; he could take charge of the family estates, and qualify himself
for the law; the king was ready to smile upon him; but all worldly
ambitions died away in him when he heard Thomas Lee testify of the
faith that overcomes the world. Nothing less than that would satisfy
Penn. In 1666, when he was two and twenty, he made acquaintance with
the inside of a jail on account of his conscientious perversities; but
the only effect of the experience was to make him perceive that he had
thereby become "his own freeman." When he got out, his friends cut him
and society made game of him; finally, he was lodged in the Tower,
which, he informed Charles II., seemed to him "the worst argument in
the world." They let him out in less than a year, but in less than a
year more he was again arrested and put on trial. The jury, after
having been starved for two days and heartily cursed by the judge,
brought him in not guilty; upon which the judge, with a fine sense of
humor, fined them all heavily and sent him back to prison. But this was
too much for the admiral, who paid his fines and got him out; and,
being then on his death-bed, surrendered at discretion, restoring to
him the inheritance, and observing, not without a pensive satisfaction,
that he and his friends would end by "making an end of the priests."

A six months' term in Newgate was still in store for Penn; but after
that they gave up this method of reforming him. He spent the next years
in exhorting Parliament and reproving princes all over Europe; and in
the midst of these labors he met one of the best and most beautiful
women in England; she had suitors by the score, but she loved William
Penn, and they were married. She was the wife of his mind and soul as
well as of his bed and board. He was now doubly fortified against the
world, and doubly bound to his career of human benevolence. His studies
and meditations had made him a profound philosopher and an able
statesman; and in all ways he was prepared to begin the great work of
his life.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile, the Quakers in the new world were building up the framework
of their state. They decreed to put the power in the people, and all
the articles of their constitution embody the utmost degree of freedom,
with constant opportunities for the electors to revise or renew their
judgments. When the agent of the Duke of York levied customs on ships
going to New Jersey, the act drew from the colonists a remarkable
protest, which was supported by the courts. They had planted in the
wilderness, they said, in order, among other things, to escape
arbitrary taxation; if they could not make their own laws in a land
which they had bought, not from the Duke, but from the natives, they
had lost instead of gaining liberty by leaving England. Taxes levied
upon planting left them nothing to call their own, and foreshadowed a
despotic government in England, when the Duke should come to the
throne. The future James II. gave up his claim, and in 1680 signed an
indenture to that effect. Later, at the advice of Penn, they so amended
their constitution as to give them power to elect their own governor. A
charter was drawn up by Penn and confirmed in 1681, and he became
proprietor. No man ever assumed such a trust with less of personal
ambition or desire for gain than he. "You shall be governed by laws of
your own making," said he; "I shall not usurp the right of any, or
oppress his person." He had already made inroads on his estate by
fighting the cause of his brethren in England in the courts; but when a
speculator offered him six thousand pounds down and an annual income
for the monopoly of Indian trade, he declined it; the trade belonged to
his people. He was ardently desirous to benefit his colony by putting
in operation among them the schemes which his wisdom had evolved; but
he would not override their own wishes; they should be secured even
from his power to do them good; for, as liberty without obedience is
confusion, so is obedience without liberty slavery. Instead therefore
of imposing his designs upon them, he submitted them for their free
consideration. Pennsylvania now occupied its present boundaries, with
the addition of Delaware; and western New Jersey ceased to be the
nominal home of the Friends in America. In 1682, Penn embarked for the
Delaware. He had founded a free colony for all mankind, believing that
God is in every conscience; and he was now going to witness and
superintend the working of his "holy experiment."

On October 29th he was received at Newcastle by a crowd of mixed
nationality, and the Duke of York's agent formally delivered up the
province to him. The journey up the Delaware was continued in an open
boat, and the site of Philadelphia was reached in the first week of
November. There a meeting of delegates from the inhabitants was held
and the rules which were to govern them were reviewed and ratified.
Among these it was stipulated that every Christian sect was eligible to
office, that murder only was a capital crime, that marriage was a civil
contract, that convict prisons should be workhouses, that all who paid
duties should be electors, and that there should be no poor rates or
tithes. Then Penn proceeded to lay out the city of Philadelphia, where
they "might improve an innocent course of life on a virgin Elysian
shore." It was here that the Declaration of Independence was signed
ninety-three years afterward.

In March, before the leaves had budded on the tall trees whose
colonnades were as yet the only habitation for the emigrants, the
latter set to work to settle their constitution. "Amend, alter or add
as you please," was the recommendation with which Penn submitted it to
them--the work of his ripest wisdom and loving good-will. To the
governor and council it assigned the suggestion of all laws; these
suggestions were then to be submitted by the assembly to the body of
the people, who thus became the direct law-makers. To Penn was given
the power to negative the doings of the council, he being responsible
for all legislation; but he could originate and enforce nothing. He
would accept no revenues; and, indeed, except in the way of helpfulness
and counsel, never in any way imposed himself upon his people. He was
the proprietor; but in all practical respects, Pennsylvania was a
representative democracy. That they should be free and happy was his
sole desire.

In its relations with the Indians, the colony was singularly fortunate;
the doctrine of non-resistance succeeded best where least might have
been expected from it. All lands were purchased, conferences being held
and deeds signed; and the red men were given thoroughly to understand
that nothing but mutual good was intended. They took to the new idea
kindly; the law of retaliation had been the principle of their lives
hitherto; but if a man did good to them, and dealt honestly by them,
should not they retaliate by manifesting the same integrity and
good-will? At one time it was reported that a band of Indians had
assembled on the border with the design of avenging some grievance with
a massacre. Six unarmed Quakers started at once for the scene of
trouble, and the Indians subsided. It has long been admitted that it
takes two sides to make a fight; but this was an indication that it
needs resistance to make a massacre. Penn, who was fond of visiting the
Indians in their wigwams, and sharing their hospitality, formed an
excellent opinion of them. He discoursed to them of their rights as
men, and of their privileges as immortal souls; and they conceded to
him his claim to peaceful possession of his province. Not less
remarkable was the fate of witchcraft in Pennsylvania. The Swedes and
Finns believed in witches, upon the authority of their native
traditions; and a woman of their race having acted in a violent and
unaccountable manner, they put her on her trial for witchcraft. Both
Swedes and Quakers composed the jury; there were no hysterics; the
matter was dispassionately canvassed; impressions and prejudices were
not accepted as evidence; and in the end the verdict was that though
she was guilty of being called a witch, a witch she nevertheless was
not. The distinction was so well taken that no more witch trials or
panics occurred. This was in 1684, eight years before the disasters in
New England. But newspapers did not exist in those days, and public
opinion was undeveloped.

The colony, receiving a world-wide advertisement by dint of the
excellence of its institutions and the singularity of its principles,
became a magnet to draw to itself the "good and oppressed" of all
Europe. There were a good many of them; and within a couple of years
from the time when Philadelphia meant blaze-marks on trees and three or
four cottages, it had grown to be a real town of six hundred houses.
The colony altogether mustered eight thousand people. With justifiable
confidence, therefore, that all was well, and would stay so, Penn, with
many loving words for his people, returned to England to continue the
defense of the afflicted there. A dispute as to the right boundaries of
Delaware and Maryland was also to be determined; but it proved to be a
lingering negotiation, chiefly noteworthy on account of its leading to
the fixing of the line by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, which
afterward became the recognized boundary between the States where
slaves might be owned and those where they might not. The line was
surveyed, finally, in 1767.

Penn being gone, the people applied themselves to experimenting with
their constitution. A constitution which is devised to secure liberty
to the subject, including liberty to modify or change it, is as nearly
unchangeable as any mortal structure can be. The inhabitants of
Pennsylvania had never known before what it was to be free, and they
naturally wished to test the new gift or quality in every way open to
them. Not having the trained brain and unselfish wisdom that belonged
to Penn, of which the constitution was the offspring, they thought that
they could improve its provisions. But the more earnestly they labored
to this end, the more surely were they brought to the confession that
he had known how to make them free better than they themselves did.
When they resolved against taxes, they found themselves without
revenue; when they refused to discipline a debtor, they found that
credit was no longer to be had. They fussed and fretted to their
hearts' content, and no great harm came of it, because the constitution
was always awaiting them with forgiveness when they had tired
themselves with abusing it. The only important matter that came to
judgment was the slavery question; Penn himself had slaves, though he
came to doubt the righteousness of the practice, and liberated them in
his will--or would have done so, had the injunction been carried out by
his heirs. Slaves in Pennsylvania were to serve as such for fourteen
years, and then become adscripts of the soil--that is to say, they were
permitted to become the same thing under another name. Penn ultimately
conceived the ambition to vindicate the presence of the Inner Light in
the negroes' souls; but he met with small success--even less than with
the Indians. The problem of the negro was not to be solved in that way,
or at that time. No doubt, if a negro slave could be made to feel that
the mere circumstance of external bondage was nothing, so long as his
inner man was untrammeled, it would add greatly to the convenience both
of himself and his master. But the theory did not seem to carry weight
so long as the practice accompanied it; and the world, even of
Pennsylvania, was not quite ready to abolish negro slavery in 1687.

Of the thirteen colonies, twelve had now had their beginning, and
Georgia, the home of poor debtors, shed little or no fresh light upon
the formation of the American principle. The Revolution of 1688, which
put William of Orange on the English throne, was now at hand; but
before examining its effect upon the American settlements we must cast
a glance at the transactions of the previous dozen years in the New
England division.

The theory of the English government regarding the American colonies
had always been, that they were her property. The people who emigrated
had been English subjects, and--to adapt the Latin proverb--Coelum, non
Regem, mutant, qui trans mare currunt. Moreover, the English, as was
the custom of the age, asserted jurisdiction over all land first seen
and claimed by mariners flying their flag; and though Spain and France
might claim America with quite as much right as England, yet the latter
would not acknowledge their pretensions. A country, then, occupied by
English subjects, and owned by England, could not reasonably assert its
private independence.

Such was England's position, from which she never fully receded until
compelled to do so by force of arms. But the colonists looked at the
matter from a different point of view. They held the right of ownership
by discovery to be unsubstantial; it was a mere sentiment--a matter of
national pride and prestige--not to be valued when it came in conflict
with the natural right conveyed by actual emigration and settlement.
The man who transferred himself, with his family and property, to a
virgin country. Intending to make his permanent home there, should not
be subject to arbitrary interference from any one; his vital interests
and welfare were involved; he should be ruled by authority appointed by
himself; should pay only such taxes as he himself levied for the
expenses of his establishment; and should enjoy the profits of whatever
products he raised and whatever commerce he carried on. He had
withdrawn himself from participation in the advantages of home
civilization, and had voluntarily faced a life of struggle and peril in
the wilderness, precisely because he had counted these things as
nothing in comparison with the gain of controlling his own affairs; but
if, nevertheless, the mother country insisted on managing them, or in
any way controlling him, then all enterprise became vain, all his
sacrifices had been fruitless, and he was in all ways worse off than
before he took steps to better himself. An Englishman living in England
might rightly be taxed for the protection to life and property and the
enjoyment of privileges which she afforded him, and which he, through a
representative parliament, created; but England gave no protection to
her colonies, and the colonists were not represented in her parliament;
neither had the English government been put to any expense or trouble
in bringing those colonies into existence; to tax them, therefore, was
an act of despotism; it deprived them of the right which all Englishmen
possessed to the fruits of their own labor; it robbed them of values
for which no equivalent had been yielded; and thus, from freemen, made
them slaves. Not less unjustifiable, for the same reasons, was
interference with colonial governments, and with religious liberties of
all kinds.

England could not categorically refute these arguments; but she could
reply that her granting of a charter to the colonies had implied some
hold upon them, including a first lien upon commercial products; while
so far as governmental jurisdiction was concerned, it might be
considered an open question whether the colonies were capable of
adequately governing themselves, and she was therefore warranted, in
the interests of order, in exercising that function herself. But the
reply was a weak one; and when the colonists rejoined that the charter,
if it had any practical significance at all, merely gave expression to
a friendly interest in the adventure, as a parent might give a son a
letter hoping that he would do well; and that the question of
government was not an open one, inasmuch as the orderliness and
efficiency of their institutions were visible and undeniable:--it was
left to England only to say that, once an English subject, always an
English subject, and that when she commanded the colonies must comply.

As a matter of fact, she avoided as much as possible putting this
ultimatum in precise words; and the colonies were at least as reluctant
to oppose a definite defiance. Diplomacy labors long before
acknowledging a finality. There was on both sides a deeply-rooted
determination to prevail; but an open rupture was shunned. Furthermore,
a strong sentiment of loyalty existed in the colonies, which
sentimentally and sometimes practically injured the logic of their
attitude. They acknowledged the English king to be theirs; they
addressed him in deferential and submissive terms; they wished, in some
sense, to keep hold of their mother's hand, and yet they protested
against the maternal prerogative. Their status was anomalous; and it is
easy to say that they should have declared their purpose, from the
first, to be an independent nation in the full sense of the world. But
the logical and the natural are often at variance. Liberty is not
necessarily attainable only through political independence. The
colonists, if they wished to be another England in miniature, had not
contemplated becoming a people foreign to England, in the sense that
France or Spain was. They loved the English flag, in spite of the cross
which Endicott disowned; they were proud of the English history which
was also theirs. Why should they sever themselves from these? It was
not until English injustice and selfishness, long endured, became at
last unendurable, that the resolve to live truly independent, or to
die, fired the muskets of Lexington and Concord.

The most galling of the measures which weighed upon New England was
that called the Navigation Acts. These were passed in the interests of
the English trading class, and by their influence. In their original
form, in 1661, they had involved no serious injury to the colonies, and
had, moreover, been so slackly enforced that they were almost a dead
letter. But after Charles II. came to the throne, they assumed a more
virulent aspect. They forbade the importation into the colonies of any
merchandise, except in English bottoms, captained by Englishmen, thus
excluding from American ports every cargo not owned by British
merchants. On the other hand, they decreed that no American produce
should find its way into other than English hands, except such things
as the English did not want, or could buy to better advantage
elsewhere; and even these could be disposed of at no ports nearer
England than the Mediterranean. Next, by an extension of the Acts, the
inhabitants of one colony were forbidden to deal with those of another
except on payment of duties intended to be prohibitory. And finally,
the colonists were enjoined not to manufacture even for their private
consumption, much less for export, any goods which English
manufacturers produced. They could do nothing but grow crops, and the
only reason that anything whatever was permitted to go from the
colonies to foreign ports, was in order that the former might thus get
money with which to pay for the forced importations from England. The
result of such a policy was, of course, that money was put into the
pockets of English shopkeepers, but all other Englishmen gained
nothing, and the colonists lost the amount of the shopkeepers' profit,
as well as the incidental and incalculable advantages of free
enterprise.

[Illustration: A Quaker in the Stocks]

These laws pressed most severely on Massachusetts, because her shipping
exceeded that of all the other colonies, and the smuggling which their
geographical peculiarities made easy to them was impossible for her.
Besides, manufacturing was never followed by the southern colonies, and
their chief products, tobacco and cotton, not being grown elsewhere,
could be sold at almost as good a profit in England as anywhere else.

But if Massachusetts was the chief object of these oppressive measures,
she was also more inflexible than the other colonies in insisting upon
her rights. The motto of the Rattlesnake flag carried at the beginning
of the Revolution--"Don't tread on Me"--expressed the temper of her
people from an early period in her history. We shall shortly see how
resolutely and courageously she fought her battle against hopeless
odds. Meanwhile, we may inquire how and why the other colonies of the
New England confederation fared better at the hands of the mother
country.

One of the most agreeable figures in our colonial history is the son of
that John Winthrop who brought the first colonists to Massachusetts
Bay, on June 22, 1630. He had been born at Groton, in England, in 1606,
and was therefore fifty-six years old when he returned to that country
as agent for Connecticut, and obtained its charter from Charles. He had
been educated at Dublin, and before emigrating to the colonies had been
a soldier in the French wars, and had traveled, on the Continent. After
landing at Boston, he had helped his father in his duties, and had then
founded the town of Ipswich in Massachusetts. None was more ardent than
he in the work of preparing a home for the exiles in the wilderness; he
added his own fortune to that of his father, and thought no effort too
great. In him the elements were so kindly mixed that his heart was as
warm and his mind as liberal as his energy was tireless; it was as if a
Roger Williams had been mingled with an elder Winthrop; enthusiasm and
charity were tempered with judgment and discretion. The love of
creating means of happiness for others was his ruling motive, and he
was gifted with the ability to carry it out; he felt that New England
was his true home, because there he had fullest opportunity for his
self-appointed work. It is almost an effort for men of this age to
conceive of a nature so pure as this, and a character so blameless; we
search the records for some weakness or deformity. But all witnesses
testify of him with one voice; and it may be borne in mind that the
spirit of Puritanism at that epoch was mighty in the individual as in
the community, purging the soul of many self-indulgent vices which the
laxity and skepticism of our time encourage; and when, in addition,
there is a nation to be made on principles so lofty as those which
Puritanism contemplated, one can imagine that there would be little
space for the development of the lower instincts, or the unworthier
ambitions. When all is said, however, Winthrop the Younger still
remains a surprising and rare type; and it is an added pleasure to know
that in all that he undertook he was successful (he never undertook
anything for himself), and that he was most happy in a loving wife and
in his children. It was a rounded life, such as a romancer hardly dares
to draw; yet there may be many not less lovely, only less conspicuously
placed.

When there was need for a man to go to England and plead before the
king for Connecticut--of which, for fourteen consecutive years
thereafter, he was annually elected governor--who but Winthrop could be
selected? He went with all the prayers of the colony for his good
fortune; and it was of good omen that he met there, in the council for
the colonies appointed by the king, Edward Hyde, first Earl of
Clarendon and Lord Chancellor, then in the prime of his career, and two
years younger than Winthrop; and William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and
Sele, who was in the eightieth and final year of his useful and
honorable career, and who, in 1632, had obtained a patent for land on
the Connecticut river. Through his influence the interest of the Lord
Chamberlain was secured, and Clarendon himself was cordial for the
charter. With such support, the way was easy, and the document was
executed in April of 1662. It gave the colonists all the powers of an
independent government. There was no reservation whatever; their acts
were not subject even to royal inspection. Nevertheless, Charles, by
effecting the amalgamation of New Haven with Hartford, not altogether
with the consent of the former, arbitrarily set aside the provision of
the federation compact which forbade union between any of its members
except with the consent of all; and thereby he asserted his
jurisdiction (if he chose to exercise it) over all the colonies. He
could give gracious gifts, but on the understanding that they were of
grace, not obligation. In the oppression of Massachusetts, this served
as an unfortunate precedent.

Nor must it be forgotten that the happiness of Connecticut was in part
due to the fact that, as a matter of high policy, it was desired to
conciliate her at Massachusetts's expense. Massachusetts was much the
strongest of the colonies; her tendency to disaffection was known in
England; and it seemed expedient to place her in a position isolated
from her sisters. Were all of them equally wronged, their union against
the oppressor was inevitable. Connecticut and Rhode Island could be of
small present value to England from the commercial standpoint, and
their heartfelt loyalty seemed cheaply purchased by suffering that
value to accumulate. Charles could be lavish and reckless, and he was
constitutionally "good-humored"--that is, he liked to have things go
smoothly, and if anybody suffered, wished the fact to be kept out of
his sight. But he was incapable of generosity, in the sense of
voluntarily sacrificing any selfish interest for a noble end; and if he
patted Connecticut on the back, it was only in order that she might
view with toleration his highway robbery of her sister.

All this, however, need not dash our satisfaction at the advantages
which Connecticut enjoyed, and the good they did her. The climate and
physical nature of the country required an active and wholesome life in
the inhabitants, while yet the conditions were not so severe as to
discourage them. They were of a rustic, hardy, industrious temper, of
virtuous and godly life, and animated by the consciousness of being
well treated. They lived and labored on their farms, and there were not
so many of them that the farms crowded upon one another, though the
population increased rapidly. Each of them delighted in the cultivation
of his private "conscience"; and, in the absence of wars and
oppressions, they argued one with another on points of theology, fate,
freewill, foreknowledge absolute. They were far from indifferent to
learning, but they liked nothing quite so well as manhood and
integrity. The Connecticut Yankee impressed his character on American
history, and wherever in our country there has been evidence of pluck,
enterprise and native intelligence, it has generally been found that a
son of Connecticut was not far off. They were not averse from
journeying over the earth, and many of them had the pioneer spirit, and
left their place of birth to establish a miniature Connecticut
elsewhere; their descendants will be found as far west as Oregon, and
their whalers knew the paths of the Pacific as well as they did the
channels of Long Island Sound. Tolerant, sturdy, pious, shrewd, prudent
and brave, they formed the best known type of the characteristic New
Englander, as represented by the national figure of Uncle Sam. They
were sociable and inquisitive, yet they knew how to keep their own
counsel; and the latch-string hung out all over the colony, in
testimony at once of their honesty and their hospitality. Few things
came to them from the outer world, and few went out from them; they
were industrially as well as politically independent. They were
economical in both their private and their public habits; no money was
to be made in politics, partly because every one was from his youth up
trained in political procedure; every town was a republic in little.
The town meeting was open to all citizens, and each could have his say
in it, and many an acute suggestion and shrewd criticism came from
humble lips. It is in such town meetings that the legislators were
trained who then, and ever since, have become leading figures in the
statesmanship of the country. In England, a hereditary aristocracy were
educated to govern the nation; in the colonies, a nation was educated
to govern itself. Our system was the sounder and the safer of the two.
But the professional politician was then unthought of; he came as the
result of several conditions incident to our national development; he
has perhaps already touched his apogee, and is beginning to disappear.
The nation has awakened to a realization that its interests are not
safe in his hands.

Calvinism prevailed in the colony, as in Massachusetts; but there were
many of the colonists who did not attend at the meeting-house on the
Sabbath, not because they were irreligious or vicious, but either
because they lived far from the rendezvous, or because they did not
find it a matter of private conscience with them to sit in a pew and
listen to a sermon. Moreover, it was the rule among Calvinists that no
one could join in the Communion service who had not "experienced
religion"; and many excellent persons might entertain conscientious
doubts whether this mysterious subjective phenomenon had taken place in
them. Pending enlightenment on that point, they would naturally prefer
not to sit beside their more favored brethren during the long period of
prayer and discourse, only to be obliged to walk out when the vital
stage of the proceedings was reached. But it was also the law that only
children of communicants should receive baptism; and since not to be
baptized was in the religious opinion of the day to court eternal
destruction, it will easily be understood that non-communicating
parents were rendered very uneasy. What could they do? One cannot get
religion by an act of will; but not to get it was to imperil not only
their own spiritual welfare, but that of their innocent offspring as
well; they were damned to all posterity. The matter came up before the
general court of Connecticut, and in 1657 a synod composed of ministers
of that colony and of Massachusetts--New Haven and Plymouth declining
to participate--sat upon the question, and softened the hard fate of
the petitioners so far as to permit the baptism of the children of
unbaptized persons who engaged to rear them in the fear of the Lord.
This "half-way covenant," as it came to be termed, did not suit the
scruples of Calvinists of the stricter sort; but it gave comfort to a
great many deserving folk, and probably did harm to no human soul, here
or hereafter.

Short are the annals of a happy people; until the Revolutionary days
began, there is little to tell of Connecticut. The collegiate school
which half a generation later grew into the college taking its name
from its chief benefactor, Elihu Yale, had its early days in the
village at the mouth of the Connecticut river, named, after Lord Saye
and Sele, Saybrook. The institution of learning called after the pious
and erudite son of the English butcher of Southwark, founded on the
banks of the river Charles near Boston, had come into existence more
than sixty years before; but Yale followed less than forty years after
the granting of the Connecticut charter. New England people never lost
any time about securing the means of education.

The boundaries of Rhode Island were the occasion of some trouble;
though one might have supposed that since the area which they inclosed
was so small, no one would have been at the pains to dispute them. But
in the end, Roger Williams obtained the little he had asked for in this
regard, while as to liberties, his charter made his community at least
as well off as was Connecticut. Their aspiration to be allowed to prove
that the best civil results may be coincident with complete religious
freedom, was realized. Charles gave them everything; liberty for a
people who thought more of God than of their breakfasts, and whose
habitation was too small for its representation on the map to be seen
without a magnifying glass, could not be a dangerous gift. The charter
was delivered in 1663 to John Clarke, agent in England for the colony,
and was taken to Rhode Island by the admirable Baxter in November of
that year. All the two thousand or more inhabitants of the colony met
together to receive the precious gift; Baxter, placed on high, read it
out to them with his best voice and delivery, and then held it up so
that all might behold the handsomely engrossed parchment, and the
sacred seal of his dread majesty King Charles. What a picture of
democratic and childlike simplicity! With how devout and earnest an
exultation did the people murmur their thanks and applause! The crowd
in their conical hats and dark cloaks, the chill November sky, the gray
ripples of Narragansett Bay, the background of forest trees, of which
only the oaks and walnuts still retained the red and yellow remnants of
their autumn splendor; the quaint little ship at anchor, with its
bearded crew agape along the rail; and Baxter the center of all eyes,
holding up the charter with a sort of holy enthusiasm! Such a scene
could be but once; and time has brought about his revenges. With what
demeanor would the throng at the fashionable watering place greet a
messenger from the English sovereign to-day! John Clarke, the
Bedfordshire doctor, to whose fidelity and persistent care the colony
owed much, fully participated in the contagion of goodness which marked
the New England emigrants of the period. He served his fellow colonists
all his life, and at his death left them all he had; and it seems
strange that he should have been one of the founders of aristocratic
Newport, and its earliest pastor. But it is not the only instance of
the unexpected use to which we sometimes put the bequests of our
ancestors.

The early vicissitudes of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont are hardly
of importance enough to warrant a detailed examination. Vermont was not
settled till well into the Eighteenth Century. Maine had been fingered
by the French, and used as a base of operations by fishermen, long
before its connection with Massachusetts; the persistency of Gorges
complicated its position for more than forty years. After his death,
and in the irresponsiveness of his heirs, the few inhabitants of the
region were constrained to shift for themselves; in 1652 the
jurisdiction was found to extend three miles north of the source of the
Merrimack, and Massachusetts offering its protection in enabling a
government to be formed, and acting upon the priority of its grant,
annexed the whole specified region. But more than twenty years
afterward, in 1677, the English committee of the privy council examined
the charter, and found that Massachusetts had no jurisdiction over
Maine and New Hampshire (the separate existence of which last had
scarcely been defined). The direct object of this decision of the
committee was to provide the bastard son of Charles, Monmouth, with a
kingdom of his own; no one knew anything about the resources or
possibilities of the domain, and, omne ignotum pro magnifico, it was
surmised that it would yield abundant revenues. But Massachusetts did
not want the Duke for a neighbor; and while Charles was considering
terms of purchase, she bought up the Gorges claim for some twelve
hundred pounds. The Maine of that epoch was not, of course, the same as
that of to-day; the French claimed down to the Kennebec, and the Duke
of York, not content with New York, asserted his ownership from the
Kennebec to the Penobscot; so that for Massachusetts was left only what
intervened between the Kennebec and the Piscataqua. Being proprietor of
this, she made it a province with a governor and council whom she
appointed, and a legislature derived from the people; the province not
relishing its subordination, but being forced to submit. Two years
later, in 1679, New Hampshire was cut off from Massachusetts and made
the first royal province of New England. The people of the province
were ill-disposed to surrender any of the liberties which they saw
their neighbors in the enjoyment of; and disregarding the feelings of
the king's appointee, its representatives declared that only laws made
by the assembly and approved by the people should be valid. Robert
Mason, who had a patent to part of the region, finding himself opposed
by the colonists, got permission from England to appoint an adventurer,
Edward Cranfield, governor; Cranfield went forth with hopes of much
plunder; but they would not admit his legitimacy, and he took the
unprecedented step of dissolving the assembly; the farmers revolted,
and their ringleader, Gove, was condemned for treason, and spent four
years in the Tower of London. It was another attempt to convince the
spirit of liberty by "the worst argument in the world"; but it was
ridiculous as well as bad in Gove's case; he was but a hard-fisted
uneducated countryman, whose belief that the patch of land he had
cleared and planted among the New England mountains was his, and not
another's, was not to be dissipated by dungeons. The disputed
land-titles got into the law courts, where judges and juries were
fixed; but no matter which way the decisions went, the people kept
their own. Cranfield sent an alarmist report of affairs to London,
declaring that "factions" would bring about a separation of the colony
unless a frigate were sent to Boston to enforce loyalty. Nothing was
done. Cranfield tried to raise money through the assembly by a tale
about an invasion, which existed nowhere save in his own imagination;
the assembly refused to be stampeded. The clergy were against him, and
he attempted to overcome them by restrictive orders; but they defied
him; he imprisoned one of them, Moody; and succeeded in disturbing
church service; but the people would rather not go to meeting than obey
Cranfield. His last effort was to try to levy taxes under pretense of
an Indian war; but the people thwacked the tax collectors with staves,
and the women threatened them with hot water. A call for troops to
quell the disturbances was utterly disregarded. How was a governor to
govern people who refused to be governed?

Cranfield gave it up. He had been struggling three years, and had
accomplished nothing. He wrote home that he "should esteem it the
greatest happiness to be allowed to remove from these unreasonable
people"; and this happiness was accorded to him; it was the only
happiness which his appointment had afforded. New Hampshire was in bad
odor with the English government; but the farmers could endure that
with equanimity. They had demonstrated that the granite of their
mountains had somehow got into their own composition; and they were let
alone for the present, the rather since Massachusetts was enough to
occupy the king's council at that time.

The fight between Massachusetts and Charles began with the latter's
accession in 1660, and continued till his death, when it was continued
by James II. The charter of the colony was adjudged to be forfeited in
1684, twenty-four years after the struggle opened. While it was at its
height, the Indian war broke out to which the name of the Pokanoket
chief, King Philip, has been attached. Thus both the diplomacy and the
arms of the colony were tested to the utmost, at one and the same time;
the American soldiers were victorious, though at a serious cost of life
and treasure; the diplomatists were defeated; but Massachusetts had
learned her strength in both directions, and suffered less, in the end,
by her defeat than by her victory. The issue between England and her
colony had become clearly defined; the people learned by practice what
they already knew in theory--the hatefulness of despotism; and their
resolve to throw it off when the opportunity should arrive was not
discouraged, but confirmed. From the Indian war they gained less than a
wise peace would have given them, and they lost women and children as
well as men. Such conflicts, once begun, must be pushed to the
extremity; but it cannot but be wished that the people of Massachusetts
might have found a means of living with the red men, as their brethren
in Pennsylvania did, in peace and amity. The conduct of Indians in war
can never be approved by the white race, but, on the other hand, the
provocations which set them on the warpath always can be traced to some
act of injustice, real or fancied, wanton or accidental, on our part.
King Philip was fighting for precisely the same object that was
actuating the colonists in their battle with King Charles. Doubtless
the rights of a few thousand savages are insignificant compared with
the higher principles of human liberty for which we contended; but
Philip could not be expected to acknowledge this, and we should extend
to him precisely the same sympathy that we feel for ourselves.

A great deal of pains had been taken to convert and civilize these New
England tribes. John Eliot translated the Bible for them; and it was he
who made the first attempt to determine the grammar of their speech.
But though many Indians professed the Christian faith, and some evinced
a certain aptitude in letters, no new life was awakened in any of them,
and no permanent good results were attained. Meanwhile, the Pokanokets,
with Philip at their head, refused to accept the white man's God, or
his learning; and they watched with anxiety his growing numbers and
power. They had sold mile after mile of land to the English, not
realizing that the aggregate of these transactions was literally taking
the ground from under their feet; but the purchasers had the future as
well as the present in view, and contrived so to distribute their
holdings as gradually to push the Indians into the necks of land whence
the only outlet was the sea. It was the old story of encroachment, with
always a deed to justify it, signed with the mark of the savage, good
in law, but to his mind a device to ensnare him to his hurt. In 1674,
Philip was compelled to appear before a court and be examined, whereat
his indignation was aroused, and, either with or without his privity,
the informer who had procured his arrest was murdered. The murderers
were apprehended and sentenced to be hanged by a jury, half white and
half Indian. The tribe retaliated and war was begun.

Philip, or Metaconet the son of Massasoit, may at this time have been
about forty years old; he had been "King" for twelve years. The
portraits of him show a face and head that one can hardly accept as
veracious; an enormous forehead impending over a small face, with an
almost delicate mouth. But he was obviously a man of ability, and his
courage was hardened by desperation. His aim was to unite all the
tribes in an effort to exterminate the entire English population,
though this has been estimated to number in New England, at that time,
more than fifty thousand persons. The odds were all upon the colonists'
side; but they had not yet learned the Indian method of warfare, and
the woods, hills and swamps, and the unprotected state of many of the
settlements, gave the Indians opportunities to prolong the struggle
which they amply improved. Had they been united, and adequately armed,
the issue might have been different.

Captain Benjamin Church, a hardy pioneer of six and thirty, who had
watched the ways of the Indians, and learned their strategy, soon
became prominent in the war, and ended as its most conspicuous and
triumphant figure. At first the colonists were successful, and Philip
was driven off; but this did but enable him to spread the outbreak
among other tribes. From July of 1675 till August of the next year, the
life of no one on the borders was safe. The settlers went to the
meeting-house armed, and turned out at the first alarm. They were
killed at their plowing; they were ambuscaded and cut off, tortured,
slain, and their dissevered bodies hung upon the trees. At the brook
thereafter called Bloody Run, near Deerfield, over seventy young men
were surprised and killed. Women and children were not spared; it was
hardly sparing them to carry them into captivity, as was often done.
The villages which were attacked were set on fire after the tomahawking
and scalping were done. Horrible struggles would take place in the
confined rooms of the little cabins; blood and mangled corpses
desecrated the familiar hearths, and throughout sounded the wild yell
of the savages, and the flames crackled and licked through the crevices
of the logs.

In December, Church commanded, or accompanied, the little army which
plowed through night and snow to attack the palisaded fort and village,
strongly situated on an island of high ground in the midst of a swamp,
in the township of New Kingston. The Narragansetts were surprised; the
soldiers burst their way through the palisades, and the red and the
white men met hand to hand in a desperate conflict. Then the tomahawk
measured itself against the sword, and before it faltered more than two
hundred of the New Englanders had been killed or wounded, and the
village was on fire. The pools of blood which the frost had congealed,
bubbled in the heat of the flames. None could escape; infants, old
women, all must die. It was as ghastly a fight as was ever fought. The
victors remained in the charred shambles till evening, resting and
caring for their wounded; and then, as the snow began to fall, went
back to Wickford, carrying the wounded with them. It is said that a
thousand Indian warriors fell on that day.

At Hadfield had occurred the striking episode of the congregation,
surprised at their little church, and about to be overcome, being
rescued by a mysterious gray champion, who appeared none knew whence,
rallied them, and led them to victory. It was believed to be Goffe, one
of the men who sentenced Charles I. to be beheaded, who had escaped to
New England at the time of the Restoration, and had dwelt in retirement
there till the peril of his fellow exiles called him forth. The war was
full of harrowing scenes and strange deliverances. Annie Brackett, a
prisoner in an Indian party, crossed Casco Bay in a birch-bark canoe
with her husband and infant and was rescued by a vessel which happened
to enter the harbor at the critical moment.

Church hunted the Indians with more than their own cunning and
persistency; and at last it was he who led the party which effected
Philip's death. The royal Indian was hemmed in in a swamp and finally
killed by a traitor from his own side. The savages could fight no more;
they had caused the death of six hundred men, had burned a dozen towns,
and compelled the expenditure of half a million dollars. Scattered
alarms and tragedies still occurred in the East, and along the borders;
but the war was over. In 1678 peace was signed. And then Massachusetts
turned once more to her deadlier enemy, King Charles.



CHAPTER EIGHTH

THE STUARTS AND THE CHARTER


The cutting off of Charles I.'s head was a deed which few persons in
Massachusetts would have advocated; Cromwell himself had remarked that
it was a choice between the king's head and his own. History has upon
the whole accepted the choice he made as salutary. Achilles, forgetting
his heel, deemed himself invulnerable, and his conduct became in
consequence intolerable; Charles, convinced that his anointed royalty
was sacred, was led on to commit such fantastic tricks before high
heaven as made the godly weep. Achilles was disillusioned by the arrow
of Paris, and Charles by the ax of Cromwell. Death is a wholesome
argument at times.

But though a later age could recognize the high expediency of Charles's
taking off, it was too bold and novel to meet with general approbation
at the time, even from men who hated kingly rule. Prejudice has a
longer root than it itself believes. And the Puritans of New England,
having been removed from the immediate pressure of the king's
eccentricities, were the less likely to exult over his end. Many of
them were shocked at it; more regretted it; perhaps the majority
accepted it with a sober equanimity. They were not bloodthirsty, but
they were stern.

Neither were they demonstrative; so that they took the Parliament and
the Protector calmly, if cordially, and did not use the opportunity of
their predominance to cast gibes upon their predecessor. So that, when
the Restoration was an established fact, they had little to retract.
They addressed Charles II. gravely, as one who by experience knew the
hearts of exiles, and told him that, as true men, they feared God and
the king. They entreated him to consider their sacrifices and worthy
purposes, and to confirm them in the enjoyment of their liberties. Of
the execution, and of the ensuing "confusions," they prudently forbore
to speak. It was better to say nothing than either to offend their
consciences, or to utter what Charles would dislike to hear. Their
case, as they well knew, was critical enough at best. Every foe of New
England and of liberty would not fail to whisper malice in the king's
ear. They sent over an envoy to make the best terms he could, and in
particular to ask for the suspension of the Navigation Acts. But the
committee had small faith in the loyalty of the colony, and even
believed, or professed to do so, that it might invite the aid of
Catholic and barbarous Spain against its own blood: they judged of
others' profligacy by their own. The king, to gain time, sent over a
polite message, which meant nothing, or rather less; for the next news
was that the Acts were to be enforced.

Massachusetts thereupon proceeded to define her position. A committee
composed of her ablest men caused a paper to be published by the
general court affirming their right to do certain things which England,
they knew, would be indisposed to permit. In brief, they claimed
religious and civil independence, the latter in all but name, and left
the king to be a figurehead without perquisites or power. They followed
this intrepid statement by solemnly proclaiming Charles in Boston, and
threw a sop to Cerberus in the shape of a letter couched in
conciliating terms, feigning to believe that their attitude would win
his approbation. Altogether, it was a thrust under the fifth rib, with
a bow and a smile on the recover. Probably the thrust represented the
will of the majority; the bow and smile, the prudence of the timid
sort. Simon Bradstreet and John Norton were dispatched to London to
receive the king's answer. They went in January of 1662, and after
waiting through the spring and summer, not without courteous treatment,
returned in the fall with Charles's reply, which, after confirming the
charter and pardoning political infidelities under the Protectorate,
went on to refuse all the special points which the colony had urged.

Already at this stage of the contest it had become evident that the
question was less of conforming with any particular demand or command
on the king's part, than of admitting his right to exercise his will at
all in the premises. If the colony conceded his sovereignty, they could
not afterward draw the line at which its power was to cease. And yet
they could not venture to declare absolute independence, partly
because, if it came to a struggle in arms, they could not hope to
prevail; and partly because absolute independence was less desired than
autonomy under the English flag. England was as far from granting
autonomy to Massachusetts as independence, but was willing, if
possible, to constrain her by fair means rather than by foul.
Meanwhile, the tongue of rumor fomented discord. It was said in the
colony that England designed the establishment of the Episcopal Church
in Massachusetts; whereupon the laws against toleration of "heretics,"
which had been falling into disuse, were stringently revived. In London
the story went that the escaped regicides had united the four chief
colonies and were about to lead them in arms to revolt. Clarendon, to
relieve anxiety, sent a reassuring message to Boston; but its good
effect was spoiled by a report that commissioners were coming to
regulate their affairs. The patent of the colony was placed in hiding,
the trained bands were drilled, the defenses of the harbor were looked
to, and a fast day was named with the double purpose of asking the
favor of God, and of informing the colony as to what was in the wind.
Assuredly there must have been stout souls in Boston in those days. A
few thousand exiles were actually preparing to resist England!

The warning had not been groundless. The fleet which had been fitted
out to drive the Dutch governor, Peter Stuyvesant, from Manhattan,
stopped at Boston on its way; and we may imagine that its entrance into
the harbor on that July day was observed with keen interest by the
great-grandfathers of the men of Bunker Hill. It was not exactly known
what the instructions of the English officers required; but it was
surmised that they meant tyranny. The commission could not have come
for nothing. They had no right on New England soil. The fleet, for the
present, proceeded on its way, and Massachusetts voluntarily
contributed a force of two hundred men; but they were well aware that
the trouble was only postponed; and depending on their charter, which
contained no provision for a royal commission, they were determined to
thwart its proceedings to the utmost of their power. How far that might
be, they would know when the time came. Anything was better than
surrender to the prerogative. When, in reply to Willoughby, a royalist
declared that prerogative is as necessary as the law, Major William
Hawthorne, who was afterward to distinguish himself against the
Indians, answered him, "Prerogative is not above law!" It was not,
indeed.

Accordingly, while the fleet with its commissioners was overawing the
New Netherlanders, the Puritans of Boston Bay wrote and put forth a
document which well deserves reproduction, both for the terse dignity
of the style, which often recalls the compositions of Lord Verulam, and
still more for the courageous, courteous, and yet almost aggressive
logic with which the life principles of the Massachusetts colonists are
laid down. It is a remarkable State paper, and so vividly sincere that,
as one reads, one can see the traditional Puritan standing out from the
words--the steeple crowned hat, the severe brow, the steady eyes, the
pointed beard, the dark cloak and sad-hued garments. The paper is also
singular in that it remonstrates against a principle, without waiting
for the provocation of overt deeds. This excited the astonishment of
Clarendon and others in England; but their perplexity only showed that
the men they criticised saw further and straighter than they did. It
was for principles, and against them, that the Puritans always fought,
since principles are the parents of all acts and control them. The
royal commission was, potentially, the sum of all the wrongs from which
New England suffered during the next hundred years, and though it had
as yet done nothing, it implied everything.

Whose hand it was that penned the document we know not; it was probably
the expression of the combined views of such men as Mather, Norton,
Hawthorne, Endicott and Bellingham; it may have been revised by
Davenport, at that time nearly threescore and ten years of age, the
type of the Calvinist minister of the period, austere, inflexible,
high-minded, faithful. Be that as it may, it certainly voiced the
feeling of the people, as the sequel demonstrated. It is dated October
the Twenty-fifth, 1664, and is addressed to the king.

"DREAD SOVEREIGN:--The first undertakers of this Plantation did obtain
a Patent, wherein is granted full and absolute power of governing all
the people of this place, by men chosen from among themselves, and
according to such laws as they should see meet to establish. A royal
donation, under the Great Seal, is the greatest security that may be
had in human affairs. Under the encouragement and security of the Royal
Charter this People did, at their own charges, transport themselves,
their wives and families, over the ocean, purchase the land of the
Natives, and plant this Colony, with great labor, hazards, cost, and
difficulties; for a long time wrestling with the wants of a Wilderness
and the burdens of a new Plantation; having now also above thirty years
enjoyed the privilege of Government within themselves, as their
undoubted right in the sight of God and Man. To be governed by rulers
of our own choosing and laws of our own, is the fundamental privilege
of our Patent.

"A Commission under the Great Seal, wherein four persons (one of them
our professed Enemy) are impowered to receive and determine all
complaints and appeals according to their discretion, subjects us to
the arbitrary power of Strangers, and will end in the subversion of us
all.

"If these things go on, your Subjects will either be forced to seek new
dwellings, or sink under intolerable burdens. The vigor of all new
Endeavours will be enfeebled; the King himself will be a loser of the
wonted benefit by customs, exported and imported from hence to England,
and this hopeful Plantation will in the issue be ruined.

"If the aim should be to gratify some particular Gentlemen by Livings
and Revenues here, that will also fail, for the poverty of the People.
If all the charges of the whole Government by the year were put
together, and then doubled or trebled, it would not be counted for one
of these Gentlemen a considerable Accommodation. To a coalition in this
course the People will never come; and it will be hard to find another
people that will stand under any considerable burden in this Country,
seeing it is not a country where men can subsist without hard labor and
great frugality.

"God knows our greatest Ambition is to live a quiet Life, in a corner
of the World. We came not into this Wilderness to seek great things to
ourselves; and if any come after us to seek them here, they will be
disappointed. We keep ourselves within our Line; a just dependence
upon, and subjection to, your Majesty, according to our Charter, it is
far from our Hearts to disacknowledge. We would gladly do anything in
our power to purchase the continuance of your favorable Aspect. But it
is a great Unhappiness to have no testimony of our loyalty offered but
this, to yield up our Liberties, which are far dearer to us than our
Lives, and which we have willingly ventured our Lives and passed
through many Deaths, to obtain.

"It was Job's excellency, when he sat as King among his People, that he
was a Father to the Poor. A poor People, destitute of outward Favor,
Wealth, and Power, now cry unto their lord the King. May your Majesty
regard their Cause, and maintain their Right; it will stand among the
marks of lasting Honor to after Generations."

Throughout these sentences sounds the masculine earnestness of men who
see that for which they have striven valiantly and holily in danger of
being treacherously ravished from them, and who are resolute to
withstand the ravisher to the last. It is no wonder that documents of
this tone and caliber amazed and alarmed the council in London, and
made them ask one another what manner of men these might be. It would
have been well for England had they given more attentive ear to their
misgivings; but their hearts, like Pharaoh's, were hardened, and they
would not let the people go--until the time was ripe, and the people
went, and carried the spoils with them.

The secret purpose of the commission was to pave the way for the
gradual subjection of the colony, and to begin by inducing them to let
the governor become a royal nominee, and to put the militia under the
king's orders. Of the four commissioners, Nicolls remained in New York,
as we have seen; the three others landed in Boston early in 1665. Their
first order was that every male inhabitant of Boston should assemble
and listen to the reading of the message from King Charles. These three
gentlemen--Maverick, Carr and Cartwright--were courtiers and men of
fashion and blood, and were accustomed to regard the king's wish as
law, no matter what might be on the other side; but it was now just
thirty years since the Puritans left England; they had endured much
during that time, and had tasted how sweet liberty was; and half of
them were young Americans, born on the soil, who knew what kings were
by report only. Young and old, speaking through the assembly, which was
in complete accord with them, informed the commissioners that they
would not comply with their demand. What were the commissioners, that
they should venture to call a public meeting in the town of a free
people? The free people went about their affairs, and left the three
gentlemen from the Court to stare in one another's scandalized faces.

They were the more scandalized, because their reception in Connecticut
and Rhode Island had been different. But different, also, had been the
errand on which they went there. Those two colonies were the king's
pets, and were to have liberty and all else they wanted; Connecticut
they had protected from the rapacity of Lord Hamilton, and Rhode Island
had never been other than loving and loyal to the king. They had, to be
sure, been politely bowed out by little Plymouth, the yeomen
Independents, who still preferred, if his majesty pleased, to conduct
their own household affairs in their own way. But to be positively and
explicitly rebuffed to their faces, yet glowing with the sunshine of
the royal favor, was a new experience; and Cartwright, when he caught
his breath, exclaimed, "He that will not attend to the request is a
traitor!"

The Massachusetts assembly declined to accept the characterization.
Since the king's own patent expressly relieved them from his
jurisdiction, it was impossible that their refusal to meet three of his
gentlemen-in-waiting could rightly be construed as treason. The
commissioners finally wanted to know, yes or no, whether the colonists
meant to question the validity of the royal commission? But the
assembly would not thus be dislodged from the coign of vantage; they
stuck to their patent, and pointed out that nothing was therein said
about a commission? So far as they were concerned, the commission, as a
commission, could have no existence. They recognized nothing but three
somewhat arrogant persons, in huge wigs, long embroidered waistcoats
under their velvet coats, and plumes waving from their hats. They
presented a glittering and haughty aspect, to be sure, but they had no
rights in Boston.

At length, on the twenty-third of May, matters came to a crisis. The
commissioners had given out that on that day they were going to hold a
court to try a case in which the colony was to defend an action against
a plaintiff. This, of course, would serve to indicate that the
commissioners had power--whether the assembly conceded it or not--to
control the internal economy of the settlement. Betimes in this
morning, the rather that it was a very pleasant one--the trees on the
Common being dressed in their first green leaves since last year, while
a pleasant westerly breeze sent the white clouds drifting seaward over
the blue sky--a great crowd began to make its way toward the court
house, whose portals frowned upon the narrow street, as if the stern
spirit of justice that presided within had cast a shadow beneath them.
The doors were closed, and the massive lock which secured them gleamed
in the single ray of spring sunshine that slanted along the facade of
the edifice.

It was a somber looking throng, as was ever the case in Puritan Boston,
where the hats, cloaks and doublets of the people were made of dark,
coarse materials, not designed to flatter the lust of the eye. The
visages suited the garments, wearing a sedate or severe expression,
whether the cast of the features above the broad white collars were
broad and ruddy, or pale and hollow-cheeked. There was a touch of the
fanatic in many of these countenances, as of men to whom God was a
living presence in all their affairs and thoughts, who feared His
displeasure more than the king's, who believed that they were His
chosen ones, and who knew that His arm was mighty to defend. They were
of kin to the men who stood so stubbornly and smote so sore at Marston
Moor and Naseby, and afterward had not feared to drag the father of the
present Charles to the block. Fiber more unbending than theirs was
never wrought into the substance of our human nature; and oppression
seemed but to harden it.

They conversed one with another in subdued tones, among which sounded
occasionally the lighter accents of women's voices; but they were not a
voluble race, and the forms of their speech still followed in great
measure the semi-scriptural idioms which had been so prevalent among
Cromwell's soldiers years before. They were undemonstrative; but this
very immobility conveyed an impression of power in reserve which was
more effective than noisy vehemence.

At length, from the extremity of the street, was heard the tramp of
horses' hoofs, and the commissioners, bravely attired, with cavalier
boots, and swords dangling at their sides, were seen riding forward,
followed by a little knot of officers. The crowd parted before them as
they came, not sullenly, perhaps, but certainly with no alacrity or
suppleness of deference. There was no love lost on either side; but
Cartwright, who wore the most arrogant front of the three, really
feared the Puritans more than either of his colleagues; and when, seven
years afterward, he was called before his majesty's council to tell
what manner of men they were, his account of them was so formidable
that the council gave up the consideration of the menacing message they
had been about to send, and instead agreed upon a letter of amnesty, as
likely to succeed better with a people of so "peevish and touchy" a
humor.

The cavalcade drew up before the door, and the officials, dismounting,
ascended the steps. Finding it locked, Cartwright lifted the hilt of
his sword and dealt a blow upon the massive panel.

"Who shuts the door against his majesty's commissioners?" cried he
angrily. "Where is the rascal with the keys, I say!"

"I marvel what his majesty's commissioners should seek in the house of
Justice," said a voice in the crowd; "since it is known that, when they
go in by one door, she must needs go out by the other."

At this sally, the crowd smiled grimly, and the commissioners frowned
and bit their lips. Just then there was a movement in the throng, and a
tall, dignified man with a white beard and an aspect of grave authority
was seen pressing his way toward the court house door.

"Here is the worshipful Governor Bellingham himself," said one man to
his neighbor. "Now shall we see the upshot of this matter."

"And God save Massachusetts!" added the other, devoutly.

[Illustration: An Incident of King Philip's War]

The chief magistrate of the colony advanced into the little open space
at the foot of the steps, and saluted the commissioners with formal
courtesy. "I am sorry ye should be disappointed, sirs," said he; "but I
must tell you that it is the decision of the worshipful council that ye
do not pass these doors, or order any business of the court, in this
commonwealth. Provision is made by our laws for the proper conduct of
all matters of justice within our borders, and it is not permitted that
any stranger should interfere therewith."

"Truly, Mr. Bellingham," said Maverick, resting one hand on his sword,
and settling his plumed hat on his wig with the other, "you take a high
tone; but the king is the king, here as in England, and we bear his
commission. Massachusetts can frame no laws to override his pleasure;
and so we mean to teach you. I call upon all persons here present,
under penalty of indictment for treason, to aid us, his majesty's
commissioners, to open this court, or to break it open." His voice rang
out angrily over the crowd, but no one stirred in answer.

"You forget yourself, sir," said the governor, composedly. "We here are
loyal to the king, and too much his friends to believe that he would
wrong himself by controverting the charter which bears the broad seal
affixed by his own royal father. Your claim doth abuse him more than
our refusal. But since you will not hear comfortable words, I must
summon one who will speak more bluntly."

He turned, and made a signal with his hand. "Let the herald stand
forth," said he; and at the word, a broad-shouldered, deep-chested
personage, with a trumpet in one hand and a pike in the other, stepped
into the circle and stood in the military attitude of attention.

"Hast thou the proclamation there in thy doublet, Simon?" demanded his
worship.

"Aye, verily, that have I," answered Simon, in a voice like a fog horn,
"and in my head and my heart, too!"

"Send it forth, then, and God's blessing go with it!" rejoined the
chief magistrate, forcibly, but with something like a smile stirring
under his beard.

Upon this Simon the herald filled his vast lungs with a mighty volume
of New England air, set the long brazen trumpet to his lips, and blew
such a blast that the led horses of the commissioners started and threw
up their heads, and the windows of the court house shook with the
strident vibration. Then, taking the paper on which the proclamation
was written, and holding it up before him, he proceeded to bellow forth
its contents in such stentorian wise that the commissioners might have
heard it, had they been on Boston wharf preparing to embark for
England, instead of being within three or four paces. That
proclamation, indeed, was heard over the length and breadth of New
England, and even across the Atlantic in the gilded chamber of the king
of Britain. "These fellows," muttered his majesty, with a vexed air,
"have the hardihood to affirm that we have no jurisdiction over them.
What shall be done. Clarendon?" "I have ever thought well of them," the
chancellor said, rubbing his brow; "they are a sturdy race, and it were
not well to wantonly provoke them; yet it is amazing that they should
show themselves so forward, without so much as charging the
commissioners with the least matter of crimes or exorbitances."
Clarendon, indeed, was too lenient to suit the royal party, and this
was one of the causes leading up to his impeachment a year or two later.

But the herald was not troubled, nor was his voice subdued, by thoughts
of either royalty or royal commissioners; though, as a matter of form,
he began with "In the name of King Charles," he coupled with it "by
authority of the Charter"; and went on to declare that the general
court of Massachusetts, in observance of their duty to God, to the
king, and to their constituents, could not suffer any one to abet his
majesty's honorable commissioners in their designs. There was no
mistaking the defiance, and neither the people nor the commissioners
affected to do so. The latter petulantly declared that "since you will
misconceive our endeavors, we shall not lose more of our labors upon
you"; and they departed to Maine, where they met with a less mortifying
reception. The people were much pleased, and made sport of the king's
gentlemen, and at their public meetings they were addressed in the same
"seditious" vein by magistrates and ministers. "The commission is but a
trial of our courage: the Lord will be with His people while they are
with Him," said old Mr. Davenport. Endicott, on the edge of the grave,
was stanch as ever for the popular liberties. Besides, "There hath been
one revolution against the king in England," it was remarked;
"perchance there will be another ere long; and this new war with the
Netherlands may bring more changes than some think for." On the other
hand, resistance was stimulated by tales of what the gold-laced
freebooters of the court would do, if they were let loose upon New
England. Diplomacy, however, was combined with the bolder counsels;
there was hope in delays, and correspondence was carried on with
England to that end. Charles's expressed displeasure with their conduct
was met with such replies as "A just dependence upon and allegiance
unto your majesty, according to the charter, we have, and do profess
and practice, and have by our oaths of allegiance to your majesty
confirmed; but to be placed upon the sandy foundations of a blind
obedience unto that arbitrary, absolute, and unlimited power which
these gentlemen would impose upon us--who in their actings have carried
it not as indifferent persons toward us--this, as it is contrary to
your majesty's gracious expressions and the liberties of Englishmen, so
we can see no reason to submit thereto."

The commissioners were recalled; but Charles commanded Bellingham,
Hawthorne, and a few others to appear before him in London and answer
for the conduct of the colony. The general court met for prayer and
debate; Bradstreet thought they ought to comply; but Willoughby and
others said, No. A decision was finally handed down declining to obey
the king's mandate.

"We have already furnished our views in writing," the court held, "so
that the ablest persons among us could not declare our case more fully."

Under other circumstances this fresh defiance might have borne prompt
and serious consequences; but Louis XIV. conveniently selected the
moment to declare war on England; and Boston commended herself to the
home government by arming privateers to prey upon the Canadian
commerce, and by a timely gift of a cargo of masts for the English
navy. Charles became so much interested in the ladies of his court that
he had less leisure for the affairs of empire. Yet he still kept New
England in mind; he believed Massachusetts to be rich and powerful, and
from time to time revolved schemes for her reduction; and finally, when
the colonists were exhausted by the Indian war, the privy council came
to the conclusion that, if they were not to lose their hold upon the
colony altogether, "this was the conjuncture to do something effectual
for the better regulation of that government." They selected, as their
agent, the best hated man who ever set foot on Massachusetts
soil--Edward Randolph. His mission was to prepare the way for the
revocation of its charter, and to undo all the works of liberty and
happiness which the labor and heroism of near fifty years had achieved.
He was also intrusted by Robert Mason with the management of his New
Hampshire claims. The second round in the battle between king and
people had begun.

Randolph was a remorseless, subtle, superserviceable villain, who lied
to the king, and robbed the colonists, and was active and indefatigable
in every form of rascality. During nine years he went to and fro
between London and Massachusetts, weaving a web of mischief that grew
constantly stronger and more restrictive, until at length the
iniquitous object was achieved. His first visit to Boston was in 1676;
he stayed but a few weeks, and accomplished nothing, but his stories
about the wealth and population of the colonies stimulated the greed of
his employers. Envoys were ordered to come to London, and this time
they were sent, but with powers so limited as to prevent any further
result than the cession of the jurisdiction of Massachusetts over Maine
and New Hampshire--which, as we have seen, was bought back the next
year. The enforcement of the Navigation Acts was for the moment
postponed. The colonists would pay duties to the king within the
plantation if he would let them import directly from the other
countries of Europe. But Charles wished to strengthen his grasp of
colonial power, although, if possible, with the assembly's consent. In
1678, the crown lawyers gave an opinion that the colony's disregard of
the Navigation Acts invalidated their charter. Randolph was appointed
customs collector in New England, and it was determined to replace the
laws of Massachusetts by such as were not "repugnant to the laws of
England." And the view was expressed that the settlement should be made
a royal colony. Manifestly, the precious liberties of the Puritans were
in deadly peril.

A synod of the churches and a meeting of the general court were held to
devise defense. To obviate a repeal of their laws, these were in a
measure remodeled so as to bring them nearer to what it was supposed
the king would require. Almost anything would be preferable to giving
up the right to legislate for themselves. It was first affirmed that
English laws did not operate in America, and that the Navigation Acts
were despotic because there was no colonial representation in the
English parliament. And then, to prove once more how far above all else
they prized principle, they passed a Navigation Act of their own, which
met all the king's stipulations. They would submit to the drain on
their resources and the hampering of their enterprise, but only if they
themselves might inflict them. Meanwhile, they cultivated to the utmost
the policy of delay. Randolph, came over with his patent as collector
in 1679, but though the patent was acknowledged, he was able to make no
arrangements for conducting the business. Orders were sent for the
dispatch of agents to London with unlimited powers; but Massachusetts
would not do it. Parliament would not abet the king in his despotic
plans beyond a certain point; but he was at length able to dissolve it,
and follow what counsels he pleased. His first act was to renew the
demand for plenipotentiary envoys, or else he would immediately take
steps legally to evict and avoid their charter.

Two agents, Dudley and Richards, were finally appointed to go to the
king and make the best terms possible. If he were willing to compound
on a pecuniary basis, which should spare the charter, let it be done,
provided the colony had the means for it; but, whatever happened, the
charter privileges of the commonwealth were not to be surrendered. The
agents had not, therefore, unlimited powers; and when Charles
discovered this, he directed them to obtain such powers, or a judicial
process would be adopted. This alternative was presented to
Massachusetts in the winter of 1682, and the question whether or not to
yield was made the subject of general prayer, as well as of discussion.
There seemed no possible hope in resistance. Might it not then be wiser
to yield? They might thus secure more lenient treatment. If they held
out to the bitter end, the penalty would surely be heavier. The
question ultimately came up before the general court for decision.

It is probable that no other representative body in the world would
have adopted the course taken by that of Massachusetts. Certainly since
old Roman times, we might seek in vain for a verdict which so
disregarded expediency--everything in the shape of what would now be
termed "practical politics"--and based itself firmly and unequivocally
on the sternest grounds of conscience and right. It was passed after
thorough debate, and with clear prevision of what the result must be;
but the magistrates had determined that to suffer murder was better
than to commit suicide; and this is the manner in which they set forth
their belief.

"Ought the government of Massachusetts to submit to the pleasure of the
court as to alteration of their charter? Submission would be an offense
against the majesty of heaven; the religion of the people of New
England and the court's pleasure cannot consist together. By submission
Massachusetts will gain nothing. The court design an essential
alteration, destructive to the vitals of the charter. The corporations
in England that have made an entire resignation have no advantage over
those that have stood a suit in law; but, if we maintain a suit, though
we should be condemned, we may bring the matter to chancery or to
parliament, and in time recover all again. We ought not to act contrary
to that way in which God hath owned our worthy predecessors, who in
1638, when there was a quo warranto against the charter, durst not
submit. In 1664, they did not submit to the commissioners. We, their
successors, should walk in their steps, and so trust in the God of our
fathers that we shall see His salvation. Submission would gratify our
adversaries and grieve our friends. Our enemies know it will sound ill
in the world for them to take away the liberties of a poor people of
God in the wilderness. A resignation will bring slavery upon us sooner
than otherwise it would be; and it will grieve our friends in other
colonies, whose eyes are now upon New England, expecting that the
people there will not, through fear, give a pernicious example unto
others.

"Blind obedience to the pleasure of the court cannot be without great
sin, and incurring the high displeasure of the King of kings.
Submission would be contrary unto that which hath been the unanimous
advice of the ministers, given after a solemn day of prayer. The
ministers of God in New England have more of the spirit of John the
Baptist in them, than now, when a storm hath overtaken them, to be
reeds shaken with the wind. The priests were to be the first that set
their foot in the waters, and there to stand till all danger be past.
Of all men, they should be an example to the Lord's people of faith,
courage, and constancy. Unquestionably, if the blessed Cotton, Hooker,
Davenport, Mather, Shepherd, Mitchell, were now living, they would, as
is evident from their printed books, say, Do not sin in giving away the
inheritance of your fathers.

"Nor ought we to submit without the consent of the body of the people.
But the freemen and church members throughout New England will never
consent hereunto. Therefore, the government may not do it.

"The civil liberties of New England are part of the inheritance of
their fathers; and shall we give that inheritance away? Is it objected
that we shall be exposed to great sufferings? Better suffer than sin.
It is better to trust the God of our fathers than to put confidence in
princes. If we suffer because we dare not comply with the wills of men
against the will of God, we suffer in a good cause, and shall be
accounted martyrs in the next generation, and at the Great Day."

The promulgation of this paper was the prelude to much calamity in New
England for many years; but how well it has justified itself! Such
words are a living power, surviving the lapse of many generations, and
flaming up fresh and vigorous above the decay of centuries. The
patriotism which they express is of more avail than the victories of
armies and of navies, for these may be won in an ill cause; but the
dauntless utterances of men who would rather perish than fail to keep
faith with God and with their forefathers is a victory for mankind, and
is everlasting. How poor and vain in comparison with this stern and
sincere eloquence seem the supple time-service and euphemism of vulgar
politicians of whose cunning and fruitless spiderwebs the latter years
have been so prolific. It is worth while to do right from high motives,
and to care for no gain that is not gained worthily. The men of
Massachusetts who lived a hundred years before Jefferson were Americans
of a type as lofty as any that have lived since; the work that was
given them to do was so done that time can take away nothing from it,
nor add anything. The soul of liberty is in it. It is easy to "believe
in" our country now, when it extends from ocean to ocean, and is the
home of seventy-five million human beings who lead the world in
intelligence, wealth, and the sources of power. But our country two
hundred years ago was a strip of sea-coast with Indians on one side and
tyrants on the other, inhabited by a handful of exiles, who owned
little but their faith in God and their love for the freedom of man. No
lesser men than they could have believed in their country then; and
they vindicated their belief by resisting to the last the mighty and
despotic power of England.

On November 30, 1683, the decision was made known: "The deputies
consent not, but adhere to their former bills." A year afterward the
English court, obstinate in the face of all remonstrances, adjudged the
royal charter of Massachusetts to be forfeited. It had been in
existence all but half a century. It was no more; but it had done its
work. It had made Massachusetts. The people were there--the men, the
women and the children--who would hand on the tradition of faith and
honor through the hundred years of darkness and tribulation till the
evil spell was broken by the guns of Bunker Hill. Royal governors might
come and go; but the people were growing day by day, and though
governors and governments are things of an hour, the people are
immortal, and the time of their emancipation will come. By means of the
charter, the seed of liberty was sown in favorable soil; it must lie
hid awhile; but it would gather in obscurity and seeming death the
elements of new and more ample life, and the genius of endless
expansion, Great men and nations come to their strength through great
trials, so that they may remember, and not lightly surrender what was
so hardly won.

The king's privy council, now that Massachusetts lay naked and helpless
before them, debated whether she should be ruled by English laws, or
whether the king should appoint governors and councils over her, who
should have license to work their wills upon her irresponsibly, except
in so far as the king's private instructions might direct them. A
minority, represented by Lord Halifax, who carried a wise head on young
shoulders, advised the former plan; but the majority preferred to
flatter Charles's manifest predilection, and said--not to seem
embarrassingly explicit--that in their opinion the best way to govern a
colony on the other side of an ocean three thousand miles broad, was to
govern it--as the king thought best!

So now, after so prolonged and annoying a delay, the royal libertine
had his Puritan victim gagged and bound, and could proceed to enjoy her
at his leisure. But it so fell out that the judgment against the
charter was received in Boston on the second of July, 1685, whereas
Charles II. died in London on February 6th of the same year; so that he
did not get his reward after all: not, at least, the kind of reward he
was looking for. But, so far as Massachusetts was concerned, it made
little difference; since James II. was as much the foe of liberty as
was his predecessor, and had none of his animal amiability. The last
act of the Massachusetts assembly under the old order was the
appointing of a day of fasting and prayer, to beseech the Lord to have
mercy upon his people.

The reign of James II. was a black season for the northern American
colonies; we can say no better of it than that it did not equal the
bloody horrors which were perpetrated in Scotland between 1680 and
1687. Massacres did not take place in Massachusetts; but otherwise,
tyranny did its perfect work. The most conspicuous and infamous figures
of the time are Sir Edmund Andros and Edward Randolph.

Andros, born in 1637, was thirty-seven years of age when he came to the
colonies as governor of New York on behalf of the Duke of York. He was
a lawyer, and a man of energy and ability; and his career was on the
whole successful, from the point of view of his employers and himself;
his tenure of office in New York was eight years; he was governor of
New England from 1686 to 1689, when he was seized and thrown in jail by
the people, on the outbreak of the Revolution in England; and he
afterward governed Virginia for seven years (1692-1698), which finished
his colonial career. But from 1704 to 1706 the island of Jersey, in the
English Channel, was intrusted to his rule; and he died in London,
where he was born, in 1714, being then seventy-seven years old, not one
day of which long life, so far as records inform us, was marked by any
act or thought on his part which was reconcilable with generosity,
humanity or honor. He was a tyrant and the instrument of tyranny,
hating human freedom for its own sake, greedy to handle unrighteous
spoils, mocking the sufferings he wrought, triumphing in the injustice
he perpetrated; foul in his private life as he was wicked in his public
career. A far more intelligent man than Berkeley, of Virginia, he can,
therefore, plead less excuse than he for the evil and misery of which
he was the immediate cause. But no earthly punishment overtook him; for
kings find such men useful, and God gives power to kings in this world,
that mankind may learn the evil which is in itself, and gain courage
and nobility at last to cast it out, and trample it under foot.

James II. was that most dangerous kind of despot--a stupid, cold man;
even his libertinism, as it was without shame, so was it without
passion. In his public acts he plodded sluggishly from detail to
detail, with eyes turned downward, never comprehending the larger scope
and relations of things. He was incapable of perceiving the vileness,
cruelty, or folly of what he did; the almost incredible murders in
Scotland never for a moment disturbed his clammy self-complacency.
Perhaps no baser or more squalid soul ever wore a crown; yet no doubt
ever crept into his mind that he was God's chosen and anointed. His
pale eyes, staring dully from his pale face, saw in the royal
prerogative the only visible witness of God's will in the domain of
England; the atmosphere of him was corruption and death. But from 1685
to 1688 this man was absolute master of England and her colonies; and
the disease which he bred in English vitals was hardly cured even by
the sharp medicine of the Boyne.

By the time Andros came to New England, he had learned his business.
The year after his appointment to New York, he attempted to assert his
sovereignty up to the Connecticut River; but he was opposed by deputy
governor Leet, a chip of the old roundhead block, who disowned the
patent of Andros and practically kicked him out of the colony.
Connecticut paid for her temerity when the owner of Andros became king.
In the meanwhile he returned to New York, where he was not wanted, but
was tolerated; the settlers there were a comfortable people, and
prosperous in the homely and simple style natural to them: they
demanded civil rights in good, clear terms, and cannot be said to have
been unduly oppressed at this time. New York for awhile included the
Delaware settlements, and Andros claimed both east and west Jersey. The
claim was contested by Carteret and by the Quakers. When the Jersey
commerce began to be valuable, Andros demanded tribute from the ships,
and shook the Duke's patent in the people's faces. They replied, rather
feebly, with talk of Magna Charta. In 1682, the western part came by
purchase into Quaker ownership, and, three years afterward, the eastern
part followed by patent from the Duke. To trace the vicissitudes of
this region to their end, it was surrendered to England in 1702, and
united to New York; and in 1788, in compliance with the desire of the
inhabitants, it became its own master. The settlers were of composite
stock: Quakers, Puritans, and others; and at the time of the Scotch
persecutions, large numbers of fugitive Covenanters established
themselves on the eastern slopes. The principle on which land was
distributed, in comparatively small parcels, made the Jerseys a
favorite colony for honest and industrious persons of small means; and,
upon the whole, life went well and pleasantly with them.

At the time of the return of Andros to England, in 1682, the assembly
decreed free trade, and Dongan, the new Roman Catholic governor,
permitted them to enact a liberal charter. In the midst of the
happiness consequent upon this, the Duke became king and lost no time
in breaking every contract that he had, in his unanointed state,
entered into. Taxes arbitrarily levied, titles vacated in order to
obtain renewal fees, and all the familiar machinery of official robbery
were put in operation. But Dongan, a kindly Kildare Irishman--he was
afterward Earl of Limerick--would not make oppression bitter; and the
New Yorkers were not so punctilious about abstract principles as were
the New England men. Favorable treaties were made with the Indians; and
the despot's heel was not shod with iron, nor was it stamped down too
hard. The Dongan charter, as it was called, remained in the colony's
possession for over forty years. The rule of Dongan himself continued
till 1688.

Andros, after an absence from the colonies of five years, during which
time a native but unworthy New Englander, Joseph Dudley, had acted as
president, came back to his prey with freshened appetite in 1686. He
was royal governor of all New England. Randolph, an active subordinate
under Dudley, had already destroyed the freedom of the press. Andros's
power was practically absolute; he was to sustain his authority by
force, elect his own creatures to office, make such laws as pleased
him, and introduce episcopacy. He forbade any one to leave the colony
without leave from himself; he seized a meeting house and made it into
an Episcopal church, in spite of the protests of the Puritans, and the
bell was rung for high-church service in spite of the recalcitrant
Needham. Duties were increased; a tax of a penny in the pound and a
poll tax of twenty pence were levied; and those who refused payment
were told that they had no privilege, except "not to be sold as
slaves." Magna Charta was no protection against the abolition of the
right of Habeas Corpus: "Do not think the laws of England follow you to
the ends of the earth!" Juries were packed, and Dudley, to avoid all
mistakes, told them what verdicts to render. Randolph issued new grants
for properties, and extorted grievous fees, declaring all deeds under
the charter void, and those from Indians, or "from Adam," worthless.
West, the secretary, increased probate duties twenty-fold. When
Danforth complained that the condition of the colonists was little
short of slavery, and Increase Mather added that no man could call
anything his own, they got for answer that "it is not for his majesty's
interest that you should thrive." In the history of Massachusetts,
there is no darker day than this.

The great New England romancer, writing of this period a hundred and
seventy years later, draws a vivid and memorable picture of the people
and their oppressors. "The roll of the drum," he says, "had been
approaching through Cornhill, louder and deeper, till with
reverberations from house to house, and the regular tramp of martial
footsteps, it burst into the street. A double rank of soldiers made
their appearance, occupying the whole breadth of the passage, with
shouldered matchlocks, and matches burning, so as to present a row of
fires in the dusk. Their steady march was like the progress of a
machine, that would roll irresistibly over everything in its way. Next,
moving slowly, with a confused clatter of hoofs on the pavement, rode a
party of mounted gentlemen, the central figure being Sir Edmund Andros,
elderly, but erect and soldier-like. Those around him were his favorite
councilors, and the bitterest foes of New England. At his right rode
Edward Randolph, our arch-enemy, that 'blasted wretch,' as Mather calls
him, who achieved the downfall of our ancient government, and was
followed with a sensible curse, through life and to his grave. On the
other side was Bullivant, scattering jests and mockery as he rode
along. Dudley came behind, with a downcast look, dreading, as well he
might, to meet the indignant gaze of the people, who beheld him, their
only countryman by birth, among the oppressors of his native land. The
captain of a frigate in the harbor, and two or three civil officers
under the Crown, were also there. But the figure that most attracted
the public eye, and stirred up the deepest feeling, was the Episcopal
clergyman of King's Chapel, riding haughtily among the magistrates in
his priestly vestments, the fitting representative of prelacy and
persecution, the union of church and state, and all those abominations
which had driven the Puritans to the wilderness. Another guard of
soldiers, in double rank, brought up the rear. The whole scene was a
picture of the condition of New England, and its moral, the deformity
of any government that does not grow out of the nature of things and
the character of the people. On one side the religious multitude, with
their sad visages and dark attire, and, on the other, the group of
despotic rulers, with the high churchman in the midst, and here and
there a crucifix at their bosoms, all magnificently clad, flushed with
wine, proud of unjust authority, and scoffing at the universal groan.
And the mercenary soldiers, waiting but the word to deluge the street
with blood, showed the only means by which obedience could be secured."

Education was temporarily paralyzed, and the right of franchise was
rendered nugatory by the order that oaths must be taken with the hand
on the Bible--a "popish" ceremony which the Puritans would not undergo.
The town meetings, which were the essence of New Englandism, were
forbidden except for the election of local officers, and ballot voting
was stopped: "There is no such thing as a town in the whole country,"
Andros declared. Verily, it was "a time when New England groaned under
the actual pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which
brought on the Revolution." Yet the spirit of the people was not
crushed; their leaders did not desert them; in private meetings they
kept their faith and hope alive; the ministers told them that "God
would yet be exalted among the heathen"; and one at least among them,
Willard, significantly bade them take note that they "had not yet
resisted unto blood, warring against sin!"

Boston was Andros's headquarters, and in 1688 was made the capital of
the whole region along the coast from the French possessions in the
north to Maryland in the south. But Andros had not yet received the
submission of Rhode Island and Connecticut. Walter Clarke was the
governor of the former colony in 1687, when, in the dead of winter,
Andros appeared there and ordered the charter to be given up. Roger
Williams had died three years before. Clarke tried to temporize, and
asked that the surrender be postponed till a fitter season. But Andros
dissolved the government summarily, and broke its seal; and it is not
on record that the Rhode Islanders offered any visible resistance to
the outrage. From Rhode Island Andros, with his retinue and soldiers,
proceeded to Hartford, which had lost its Winthrop longer ago than the
former its Williams. Governor Dongan of New York had warned Connecticut
of what was to come, and had counseled them to submit. Three writs of
quo warranto were issued, one upon another, and the colony finally
petitioned the king to be permitted to retain its liberties; but in any
case to be merged rather in Massachusetts than in New York. It was on
the last day of October, 1687; Andros entered the assembly hall, where
the assembly was then in session, with Governor Treat presiding. The
scene which followed has entered into the domain of legend; but there
is nothing miraculous in it; a deed which depended for its success upon
the secrecy with which it was accomplished would naturally be lacking
in documentary confirmation. Upon Andros's entrance, hungry for the
charter, Treat opposed him, and entered upon a defense of the right of
the colony to retain the ancient and honorable document, hallowed as it
was by associations which endeared it to its possessors, aside from its
political value. Andros, of course, would not yield; the only thing
that such men ever yield to is superior force; but force being on his
side, he entertained no thought of departing from his purpose. The
dispute was maintained until so late in the afternoon that candles must
be lighted; some were fixed in sconces round the walls, and there were
others on the table, where also lay the charter, with its engrossed
text, and its broad seal. The assemblymen, as the debate seemed to
approach its climax, left their seats and crowded round the table,
where stood on one side the royal governor, in his scarlet coat laced
with gold, his heavy but sharp-featured countenance flushed with
irritation, one hand on the hilt of his sword, the other stretched out
toward the coveted document:--on the other, the governor chosen by the
people, in plain black, with a plain white collar turned down over his
doublet, his eyes dark with emotion, his voice vibrating hoarsely as he
pleaded with the licensed highwayman of England. Around, is the ring of
strong visages, rustic but brainy, frowning, agitated, eager, angry;
and the flame of the candles flickering in their heavily-drawn breath.

Suddenly and simultaneously, by a preconcerted signal, the lights are
out, and the black darkness has swallowed up the scene. In the
momentary silence of astonishment, Andros feels himself violently
shoved aside; the hand with which he would draw his sword is in an iron
grasp, as heavy as that which he has laid upon colonial freedom. There
is a surging of unseen men about him, the shuffling of feet, vague
outcries: he knows not what is to come: death, perhaps. Is Sir Edmund
afraid? We have no information as to the physical courage of the man,
further than that in 1675 he had been frightened into submission by the
farmers and fishermen at Fort Saybrook. But he need not have been a
coward to feel the blood rush to his heart during those few blind
moments. Men of such lives as his are always ready to suspect
assassination.

But assassination is not an American method of righting wrong. Anon the
steel had struck the flint, and the spark had caught the tinder, and
one after another the candles were alight once more. All stared at one
another: what had happened? Andros, his face mottled with pallor, was
pulling himself together, and striving to resume the arrogant insolence
of his customary bearing. He opens his mouth to speak, but only a husky
murmur replaces the harsh stridency of his usual utterance. "What
devilish foolery is this--" But ere he can get further, some bucolic
statesman brings his massive palm down on the table with a bang that
makes the oaken plank crack, and thunders out--"The charter! Where's
our charter?"

Where, indeed? That is one of those historic secrets which will
probably never be decided one way or the other. "There is no
contemporary record of this event." No: but, somehow or other, one
hears of Yankee Captain Joe Wadsworth, with the imaginative audacity
and promptness of resource of his race, snatching the parchment from
the table in the midst of the groping panic, and slipping out through
the crowd: he has passed the door and is inhaling with grateful lungs
the fresh coolness of the cloudy October night. Has any one seen him
go? Did any one know what he did?--None who will reveal it. He is
astride his mare, and they are off toward the old farm, where his
boyhood was spent, and where stands the great hollow oak which, thirty
years ago, Captain Joe used to canvass for woodpeckers' nests and
squirrel hordes. He had thought, in those boyish days, what a good
hiding-place the old tree would make; and the thought had flashed back
into his mind while he listened to that fight for the charter to-day.
It did not take him long to lay his plot, and to agree with his few
fellow-conspirators. Sir Edmund can snatch the government, and scrawl
Finis at the foot of the Connecticut records; but that charter he shall
never have, nor shall any man again behold it, until years have passed
away, and Andros has vanished forever from New England.

Meanwhile, he returned to Boston, there, for a season, to make "the
wicked walk on every side, and the vilest to be exalted." Then came
that famous April day of 1689; and, following, event after event, one
storming upon another's heels, as the people rose from their long
bondage, and hurled their oppressors down. The bearer of the news that
William of Orange had landed in England, was imprisoned, but it was too
late. Andros ordered his soldiers under arms; but the commander of the
frigate had been taken prisoner by the Boston ship-carpenters; the
sheriff was arrested; hundreds of determined men surrounded the
regimental headquarters; the major resisted in vain; the colors and
drums were theirs; a vast throng at the town house greeted the
venerable Bradstreet; the insurrection was proclaimed, and Andros and
his wretched followers, flying to the frigate, were seized and cast
into prison. "Down with Andros and Randolph!" was the cry; and "The old
charter once more!" It was a hundred years to a day before that shot
fired at Concord and heard round the world.



CHAPTER NINTH

THE NEW LEAF, AND THE BLOT ON IT


Popular liberty is one thing; political independence is another. The
latter cannot be securely and lastingly established until the former
has fitted the nation to use it intelligently. When the component
individuals have thrown off the bondage of superstition and of
formulas, their next step must be, as an organization, to abrogate
external subordination to others, and, like a son come of age, to begin
life on a basis and with an aim of their own.

But such movements are organic, and chronologically slow; so that we do
not comprehend them until historical perspective shows them to us in
their mass and tendency. They are thus protected against their enemies,
who, if they knew the significance of the helpless seed, would destroy
it before it could become the invincible and abounding tree. Great
human revolutions make themselves felt, at first, as a trifling and
unreasonable annoyance: a crumpling in the roseleaf bed of the orthodox
and usual. They are brushed petulantly aside and the sleeper composes
himself to rest once more. But inasmuch as there was vital truth as the
predisposing cause of the annoyance it cannot thus be disposed of; it
spreads and multiplies. Had its opponents understood its meaning, they
would have humored it into inoffensiveness; but the means they adopt to
extirpate it are the sure way to develop it. Truth can no more be
smothered by intolerance, than a sown field can be rendered
unproductive by covering it with manure.

When Christ came, the common people had no recognized existence except
as a common basis on which aristocratic institutions might rest. That
they could have rights was as little conceived as that inanimate sticks
and stones could have them; to enfranchise them--to surrender to them
the reins of government--such an idea the veriest madness would have
started from. Philosophy was blind to it; religion was abhorrent to it;
the common people themselves were as far from entertaining it as cattle
in the fields are to-day. Christ's sayings--Love one another--Do as ye
would be done by--struck at the root of all arbitrary power, and
furnished the clew to all possible emancipations; but their infinite
meaning has even yet been grasped but partially. A thousand years are
but as yesterday in the counsels of the Lord. The early Christians were
indeed a democracy; but they were common people to begin with, and the
law of love suggested to them no thought of altering their condition in
that respect. The only liberty they dreamed of claiming was liberty to
die for their faith; and that was accorded to them in full measure.
Indeed, an apprenticeship, the years of which were centuries, must be
served before they could be qualified to realize even that they could
become the trustees of power.

Their simple priesthood, beginning by sheltering them from physical
violence, ended by subjecting them to a yet more enslaving spiritual
tyranny. Philosophers could frame imaginative theories of human
liberty; but the people could be helped only from within themselves.
Wiclif, giving them the Bible in a living language, and intimating that
force was not necessarily right, began their education; and Luther, in
his dogma of justification by faith alone, forged a tremendous weapon
in their behalf. Beggars could have faith; princes and prelates might
lack it; of what avail was it to gain the whole world if the soul must
be lost at last? The reasonings and discussions to which his dogma gave
rise called into existence two world-covering armies to fight for and
against it. Peace has not been declared between them yet; but there has
long ceased to be any question as to who shall have the victory.

When the battle began, however, the other side had the stronger
battalions, and there would have been little chance for liberty, but
for the timely revelation of the western continent. And, inevitably, it
was the people who went, and the aristocrats who stayed behind; because
the new idea favored the former and menaced the latter. Inevitably,
too, it was the man who had the future in him that was the exile, and
the man of the past who drove him forth. And whenever we find a man of
the aristocratic order emigrating to the colonies, we find in him the
same love of liberty which animates his plebeian companion, graced by a
motive even higher, because opposed to his inherited interests and
advantages. Thus the refuge of the oppressed became by the nature of
things the citadel of the purest and soundest civilization.

Luther, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards were in the line of succession one
from the other; each defined the truth more nearly than his
predecessor, but left it still in the rough. The whole truth is never
revealed at one time, but so much only as may forge a sword for the
immediate combat. Faith alone was a good blade for the first downright
strokes of the battle; predestination had a finer edge; and Edwards's
dialectical subtleties on the freedom of the will sharpen logic to so
fine a point that we begin to perceive that not logic but love is the
true weapon of the Christian: the mystery of God is not revealed in
syllogisms. But each fresh discrimination was useful in its place and
time, and had to exist in order to prepare the way for its successor.
The Puritans would have been less stubborn without their background of
spiritual damnation. That awful conscience of theirs would have
faltered without its lake of fire and brimstone to keep out of; and if
it had faltered, the American nation would have been strangled in its
cradle.

America, then, having no permanent attractions as a residence for any
of the upper classes of European society, became the home of the common
people, in whom alone the doctrine of liberty could find a safe
anchorage, because in them alone did the need for it abide. The
philosophy, the religion, the tolerance, the civil forms, which are
broad enough to suit the common people, must be nearly as broad as
truth itself, and therefore as unconquerable. But the broader they
appear, the more must they be offensive to the orthodox and
conventional, who by the instinct of self-preservation will be impelled
to attack them. There was never a more obvious chain of cause and
effect than that which is revealed in the history of the United States;
and having shown the conditions which led to the planting in the
wilderness of the elements which constitute our present commonwealth,
we shall now proceed to trace the manner in which they came to be
wrought into a united whole. They were as yet mainly unconscious of one
another; the opportunity for mutual knowledge had not yet been
presented, nor had the causes conducive to crystallization been
introduced. Oppression had awakened the colonists to the value of their
religious and civic principles; something more than oppression was
requisite to mold them into independent and homogeneous form. This was
afforded, during the next eighty years, by their increase in numbers,
wealth, familiarity with their country, and in the facilities for
intercommunication; and also, coincidently, by the French and Indian
wars, which apprised them of their strength, trained them in arms,
created the comradeship which arises from common dangers and aims, and
developed vast tracts of land which had otherwise been unknown. A
country which has been fought for, on whose soil blood has been shed,
becomes dear to its inhabitants; and the heroism of the Revolution
gathered heart and perseverance from the traditions and the graves of
the soldiers of the Intercolonial wars.

The English Revolution benefited the colonies, though to a less extent
than might have been expected. William of Orange was the logical
consequence, by reaction, of James II. The latter had so corrupted and
confused the kingdom, that William, whose connection with England arose
from his marriage with Mary, James's daughter, was invited to usurp the
throne by Tories, Whigs and Presbyterians--each party from a motive of
its own. The people were not appealed to, but they acquiesced. The
Roman Catholics were discriminated against, and the nonconformists were
not requited for their services; but out of many minor injustices and
wrongs, a condition better than anything which had preceded it was soon
discernible. The principle was established that royal power was not
absolute, nor self-continuing; it could be created only by the
representatives of the people, who could take it away again if its
trustee were guilty of breach of contract. The dynastic theory was
disallowed; kings were to come by election, not succession. The
nobility were recognized as the medium between the king and the people,
but not before they had conceded to the commons the right to elect a
king for life; and presently there came into existence a new
power--that of the commercial classes, the moneyed interest, which, in
return for loans to government, received political consideration.
Ownership of land ceased to be the sole condition on which a candidate
could appeal to the electors; and merchants were raised to a position
where they could control national policies. Merchants might not be
wiser or less selfish than the aristocracy; but at all events they were
of the people, and the more widely power is diffused, the less likely
is any class to be oppressed. It was no longer possible for freemen to
be ruled otherwise than by governments of their own making, and subject
to their approval. Freedom of the press, which means liberty to
criticise all state and social procedure, was established, and public
opinion, instead of being crushed, was consulted. The aristocracy could
retain its ascendency only by permitting more weight to the middle
class, whose influence was therefore bound gradually to increase.
Popular legislatures were the final arbiters; and the advantages which
the English had obtained would naturally be imparted to the colonies,
which, in addition, were unhampered by the relics of decaying systems
which still impeded the old country.

[Illustration: Arresting a Woman Charged with Witchcraft]

William cared little for England, nor were the English in love with
him; but he was the most far-seeing statesman of his day, and his
effect was liberalizing and beneficial. He kept Louis XIV. from working
the mischief that he desired, and prevented the disturbance of
political equilibrium which was threatened by the proposed successor to
the extinct Hapsburg dynasty on the Spanish throne. William was
outwardly cold and dry, but there was fire within him, if you would
apply friction enough. He was under no illusions; he perfectly
understood why he was wanted in England; and for his part, he accepted
the throne in order to be able to check Louis in his designs upon the
liberties of Holland. In defending his countrymen he defended all
others in Europe, whose freedom was endangered.

But if William's designs were large, they were also, and partly for
that reason, unjust in particulars. He was at war with France; France
held possessions in America; and it was necessary to carry on war
against her there as well as in Europe. The colonists, then, should be
made to assist in the operations; they must furnish men, forts, and, to
some extent at least, supplies. It was easy to reach this
determination, but difficult to enforce it under the circumstances. The
various colonies lacked the homogeneity which was desirable to secure
co-operative action from them; some of them were royal provinces, some
proprietary, some were in an anomalous state, or practically without
any recognizable form of government whatever. Each had its separate
interests to regard, and could not be brought to perceive that what was
the concern of one must in the end be the concern of all. But the
greatest difficulty was to secure obedience of orders after they had
been promulgated; the colonial legislatures pleaded all manner of
rights and privileges, under Magna Charta and other charters; they
claimed the privileges of Englishmen, and they stood upon their
"natural" rights as discoverers and inhabitants of a new country. They
were spread over a vast extent of territory, so that in many cases a
journey of weeks would be required, through pathless forests, across
unbridged rivers, over difficult mountains, by swamps and morasses--in
order to carry information of the commands of the government to no more
than a score or a hundred of persons. And then these persons would look
around at the miles of unconquerable nature stretching out on every
side; and they would reflect upon the thousands of leagues of salt
water that parted them from the king who was the source of these
unwelcome orders; and, finally, they would glance at the travel-stained
and weary envoy with a pitying smile, and offer him food and drink and
a bed--but not obedience. The colonists had imagination, when they
cared to exercise it; but not imagination of the kind to bring vividly
home to them the waving of a royal scepter across the broad Atlantic.

Another cause of embarrassment to the king was the reluctance of
Parliament to pass laws inhibiting the reasonable liberties of the
colonies. The influence of the Lords somewhat preponderated, because
they controlled many of the elections to the Commons; but neither
branch was disposed to increase the power of the king, and they were,
besides, split by internal factions. It was not until the mercantile
interest got into the saddle that Parliament saw the expediency of
restricting the productive and commercial freedom of the colonies, and
the necessity, in order to secure these ends, of diminishing their
legislative license. Meanwhile, William tried more than one device of
his own. First, by dint of the prerogative, he ordered that each colony
north of Carolina should appoint a fixed quota of men and money for the
defense of New York against the common enemy; this order it was found
impossible to carry out. Next, he caused a board of trade to be
appointed in 1696 to inquire into the condition of the colonies, and as
to what should be done about them; and after a year, this board
reported that in their opinion what was wanted was a captain-general to
exercise a sort of military dictatorship over all the North American
provinces. But the ministry held this plan to be imprudent, and it fell
through. At the same time, William Penn worked out a scheme truly
statesmanlike, proposing an annual congress of two delegates from each
province to devise ways and means, which they could more intelligently
do than could any council or board in England. The plan was advocated
by Charles Davenant, a writer on political economy, who observed that
the stronger the colonies became, the more profitable to England would
they be; only despotism could drive them to rebellion; and innovations
in their charters would be prejudicial to the king's power. But this
also was rejected; and finally the conduct of necessary measures was
given to "royal instructions," that is, to the king; but to the king
subject to the usual parliamentary restraint. And none of the better
class of Englishmen wished to tyrannize over their fellow Englishmen
across the sea.

Under this arrangement, the appointment of judges was taken from the
people; Habeas Corpus was refused, or permitted as a favor; censorship
of the press was revived; license to preach except as granted by a
bishop was denied; charters were withheld from dissenters; slavery was
encouraged; and the colonies not as yet under royal control were told
that the common weal demanded that they should be placed in the same
condition of dependency as those who were. But William died in 1702,
before this arrangement could be carried out. Queen Anne, however,
listened to alarmist reports of the unruly and disaffected condition of
the colonies, and allowed a bill for their "better regulation" to be
introduced. It was now that the mercantile interest began to show its
power.

The old argument, that every nation may claim the services of its own
subjects, wherever they are, was revived; and that England ought to be
the sole buyer and seller of American trade. All the oppressive and
irritating commercial regulations were put in force, and all colonial
laws opposing them were abrogated. Complaints under these regulations
were taken out of the hands of colonial judges and juries, on the plea
that they were often the offenders. Woolen manufactures, as interfering
with English industry, were so rigorously forbidden, that a sailor in
an American port could not buy himself a flannel shirt, and the
Virginians were put to it to clothe themselves at all. Naturally, the
people resisted so far as they could, and that was not a little;
England could not spare a sufficient force to insure obedience to laws
of such a kind. "We have a right to the same liberties as Englishmen,"
was the burden of all remonstrances, and it was supported by councilors
on the bench and ministers in the pulpit. The revenues were so small as
hardly to repay the cost of management. It is hard to coerce a nation
and get a profit over expenses; and the colonies were a nation--they
numbered nearly three hundred thousand in Anne's reign--without the
advantage of being coherent; they were a baker's dozen of disputatious
and recalcitrant incoherencies. The only arbitrary measure of taxation
that was amiably accepted was the post-office tax, which was seen to be
productive of a useful service at a reasonable cost; and an act to
secure suitable trees for masts for the navy was tolerated because
there were so many trees. The coinage system was no system at all, and
led to much confusion and loss; and the severe laws against piracy,
which had grown to be common, and in the profits of which persons high
in the community were often suspected and sometimes proved to have been
participants, were less effective than they certainly ought to have
been; but they, and the bloody and desperate objects of them, added a
picturesque page to the annals of the time.

Concerning the condition of the several colonies during the years
following the Revolution of 1688, it may be said, in general, that it
was much better in fact than it was in theory. There were narrow and
unjust and short-sighted laws and regulations, and there were men of a
corresponding stamp to execute them; but the success such persons met
with was sporadic, uncertain, and partial. The people were grown too
big, and too well aware of their bigness, to be ground down and kept in
subjection, even had the will so to afflict them been steady and
virulent--which it cannot be said to have been. The people knew that,
be the law what it might, it could, on the whole, be evaded or
disregarded, unless or until the mother country undertook to enforce it
by landing an army and regularly making war; and England had too many
troubles of her own, and also contained too many liberal-minded men, to
attempt such a thing for the present. The proof that the colonies were
not seriously or consistently oppressed is evident from the fact that
they all increased rapidly in population and wealth, notwithstanding
their "troubles"; and it was not until England had settled down under
her Georges, and that Providence had inspired the third of that name
with the pig-headedness that cost his adopted subjects so dear, that
the Revolution became a possibility. Yet even now there was no lack of
talk of such an eventuality; the remark was common that in process of
time the colonies would declare their independence. But perhaps it was
made rather with intent to spur England to adopt preventative measures
in season, than from a real conviction that the event would actually
take place.

New York, at the time of William's accession, had been under the
control of Andros, who at that epoch commanded a domain two or three
times as large as Britain. Nicholson was his lieutenant; and on the
news of the Revolution Jacob Leisler, a German, who had come over in
1660 as a soldier of the Dutch West India Company, and had made a
fortune, unseated Nicholson and proclaimed William and Mary. Supported
by the mass of the Dutch inhabitants, but without other warrant, he
assumed the functions of royal lieutenant-governor, pending the arrival
of the new king's appointee. In the interests of order, it was the best
thing to do. But he made active enemies among the other elements of the
cosmopolitan population of New York, and they awaited an opportunity to
be avenged on him. This came with the arrival of Henry Sloughter in
1691, with the king's commission. Sloughter can only be described as a
drunken profligate. At the earliest moment, Leisler sent to know his
commands, and offered to surrender the fort. Sloughter answered by
arresting him and Milborne, his son-in-law, on the charge of high
treason--an absurdity; but they were arraigned before a partisan court
and condemned to be hanged--they refusing to plead and appealing to the
king. It is said that Sloughter did not intend to carry the sentence
into effect; but the local enemies of Leisler made the governor drunk
that night, and secured his signature to the decree. This was on May
14, 1691; on the 15th, the house disapproved the sentence, but on the
16th it was carried out, the victims meeting their fate with dignity
and courage. In 1695, the attainder was reversed by act of parliament;
but it remains the most disgraceful episode of William's government of
the colonies.

Meanwhile, Sloughter was recalled, and Fletcher sent out. He was not a
sodden imbecile, but he was ill-chosen for his office. He described the
New Yorkers of that day as "divided, contentious and impoverished" and
immediately began a conflict with them. His attitude may be judged from
a passage in his remarks to the assembly soon afterward: "There never
was an amendment desired by the council board but what was rejected. It
is a sign of a stubborn ill-temper.... While I stay in this government
I will take care that neither heresy, schism, nor rebellion be preached
among you, nor vice and profanity be encouraged. You seem to take the
power into your own hands and set up for everything." This last
observation was probably not devoid of truth; nor was a subsequent one,
"There are none of you but what are big with the privileges of
Englishmen and Magna Charta." That well describes the colonist of the
period, whether in New York or elsewhere. It had been said of New
Yorkers, however, that they were a conquered people, who had no rights
that a king was bound to respect; and the grain of truth in the saying
may have made the New Yorkers more than commonly anxious to keep out
the small end of the wedge. Bellomont's incumbency was mild, and
chiefly memorable by reason of his having commissioned a certain
William Kidd to suppress piracy; but Kidd--if tradition is to be
believed:--certainly his most unfair and prejudiced trial in London
afforded no evidence of it--found more pleasure in the observance than
in the breach, and became the most famous pirate of them all. There is
gold enough of his getting buried along the coasts to buy a modern
ironclad fleet, according to the belief of the credulous. A little
later, Steed Bonnet, Richard Worley, and Edward Teach, nicknamed
Blackbeard, had similar fame and fate. Their business, like others of
great profit, incurred great risks.

Of Lord Cornbury, the next governor, Bancroft remarks, with unwonted
energy, that "He joined the worst form of arrogance to intellectual
imbecility," and that "happily for New York, he had every vice of
character necessary to discipline a colony into self-reliance and
resistance." He began by stealing $1,500 appropriated to fortify the
Narrows; it was the last money he got from the various assemblies that
he called and dissolved, and the assemblies became steadily more
independent and embarrassing. In 1707, the Quaker speaker read out in
meeting a paper accusing him of bribe taking. Cornbury disappears from
American history the next year; and completed his career, in England,
as the third Earl of Clarendon.

Under Lovelace, the assembly refused supplies and assumed executive
powers; when Hunter came, he found a fertile and wealthy country, but
nothing in it for him: "Sancho Panza was but a type of me." He was a
man of humor and sagacity, and perceived that "the colonists are
infants at their mother's breasts, but will wean themselves when they
come of age." Before he got through with the New Yorkers, he had reason
to suspect that the weaning time had all but arrived.

New Jersey passed through many trivial vicissitudes, changes of
ownership, vexed land-titles, and royal encroachments. For several
years the people had no visible government at all. They did not hold
themselves so well in hand as did New York, and were less audacious and
aggressive in resistance; but in one way or another, they fairly held
their own, prospered and multiplied. Pennsylvania enjoyed from the
first more undisturbed independence and self-direction than the others;
at one time it seemed to be their ambition to discover something which
Penn would not grant them, and then to ask for it. But the great Quaker
was equal to the occasion; no selfishness, crankiness, or whimsicality
on their part could wear out his patience and benevolence. In the
intervals of his imprisonments in England he labored for their welfare.
The queen contemplated making Pennsylvania a royal province, but Penn,
though poor, would not let it go except on condition it might retain
its democratic liberties. The people, in short, kept everything in
their own hands, and their difficulties arose chiefly from their
disputes as to what to do with so much freedom. It was a colony where
everybody was equal, without an established church, where any one was
welcome to enter and dwell, which was destitute of arms or defense or
even police, which yet grew in all good things more rapidly than any of
its sister colonies. The people waxed fat and kicked, but they did no
evil in the sight of the Lord, whatever England may have thought of
them; and after the contentious little appendage of Delaware had
finally been cut off from its big foster sister (though they shared the
same governors until the Revolution) there is little more to be said of
either of them.

The Roman Catholic owners of Maryland fared ill after William came into
power; he made the colony a royal province in 1691, and for thirty
years or more there were no more Baltimores in the government. Under
Copley, the first royal governor, the Church of England was declared to
be established; but dissenters were afterward protected; only the
Catholics were treated with intolerance in the garden themselves had
made. The people soon settled down and became contented, and slowly
their numbers augmented. But the Baltimores were persistent, and the
fourth lord, in 1715, took advantage of his infancy to compass a
blameless reconciliation with the Church of England, thereby securing
his installation in the proprietary rights of his forefathers, from
which the family was not evicted until the Revolution of the colonies
in 1775 opened a new chapter in the history of the world.

Virginia recovered rapidly from Berkeley, and suffered little from
Andros, who was governor in 1692, but with his fangs drawn, and an
experience to remember. The people still eschewed towns, and lived each
family in its own solitude, hospitable to all, but content with their
own company. The love of independence grew alike in the descendants of
the cavaliers and in the common people, and the wide application of the
suffrage equalized power, and even enabled the lower sort to keep the
gentry, when the fancy took them, out of the places of authority and
trust. Democracy was in the woods and streams and the blue sky, and all
breathed it in and absorbed it into their blood and bone. They early
petitioned William for home rule in all its purity; he permitted land
grants to be confirmed, but would not let their assembly supplant the
English parliament as a governing power. He sought, unsuccessfully, to
increase the authority of the church; for though the bishop might
license and the governor recommend, the parish would not present. It
was a leisurely, good-natured, careless, but spirited people,
indifferent to commerce, content to harvest their fields and rule their
slaves, and let the world go by. A more enviable existence than theirs
it would be hard to imagine. All their financial transactions were done
in tobacco, even to the clergyman's stipend and the judge's fee. No
enemy menaced them; politics were rather an amusement than a serious
duty; yet in these fertile regions were made the brains and characters
which afterward, for so many years, ruled the councils of the United
States, or led her armies in war. They lay fallow for seventy-five
years, and then gave the best of accounts of themselves. England did
not quite know what to make of the Virginians; to judge by the reports
of the governors, they were changeable as a pretty woman. But they were
simply capricious humorists, full of life and intelligence, who did
what they pleased and did not take themselves too seriously. They
indulged themselves with the novel toy, the post-office; and founded
William and Mary College in 1693. This venerable institution passed its
second centennial with one hundred and sixty students on its roll; but,
soon after, it "ceased upon the midnight, without pain." Anybody may
have a college in these days.

The Carolinas, no longer pestered by Grand Models, became another
rustic paradise. Their suns were warm, their forests vast, their people
delighting in a sort of wild civilization. When James II. went down,
the Carolinians needed no care-taker, and declined to avail themselves
of the martial law suggested by the anxious proprietors. But in 1690
they allowed Seth Sothel to occupy the gubernatorial seat, and sent up
a legislature. The southern section was subjected to some superficial
annoyance by the proprietors, who wished to make an income from the
country, but were unwilling to put their hands in their pockets in the
first place; they insisted upon their authority, and the colonists did
not say them nay, but maintained freedom of action in all their
concerns nevertheless. A series of proprietary governors were sent out
to them--Ludwell first, then Smith; both failed, and retired. Then came
Archdale, the Quaker, who struck a popular note in his remark that
dissenters could cut wood and hoe crops as well as the highest
churchmen; his policy was to concede, to conciliate and to harmonize,
and he was welcome and useful. The Indians, and even the Spaniards,
were brought into friendly relations. Liberty of conscience was
accorded to all but "papists," who were certainly hardly used in these
times. An attempt to base political power on possession of land was
defeated in 1702. The Church of England was accepted in 1704, and
though dissenters were tolerated, it remained the official dispenser of
religion until the Revolution. All these things were on the surface;
the colony, inside, was free, happy and prosperous; it had adopted rice
culture, with a great supply of negro slaves, and it brought furs from
far in the interior. The Huguenots had been enfranchised as soon as it
was known that England had turned her back on Catholicism and James.
None of the colonies had before them a future more peaceful and
profitable than South Carolina. The slaves were her only burden; but at
that period they seemed not a burden, but the assurance of her
prosperity.

North Carolina was as happy and as peaceful as her southern sister, but
the conditions of life there were different. The proprietors attempted
to control the people, but were worsted in almost every encounter. Laws
were passed only to be disregarded. Here, as elsewhere, the Quakers
became conspicuous in inculcating liberal notions, and were paid the
compliment of being hated and feared by the emissaries of England. What
was to be done with a population made up of fugitives of all kinds, not
from Europe only, but from the other colonies, who held all creeds, or
none at all; who lived by hunting and tree-cutting; who were as averse
from towns as Virginia, and many of whom could not be said to have any
fixed abode at all? If restraints were proposed, they ignored them; if
they were pressed, they resisted them, sometimes boisterously, but
never with bloodshed. Robert Daniel, deputy governor in 1704, tried to
establish the Church of England; a building was erected, but in all the
province there was but one clergyman, with an absentee congregation
scattered over hundreds of miles of mountain and forest. In the
following year there were two governors elected by opposite factions,
each with his own legislature; and in 1711 Edward Hyde, going out to
restore order, confounded the confusion. He called in Spotswood from
Virginia to help him; but there were too many Quakers; and the old
soldier, after landing a party of marines to indicate his disapproval
of anarchy, retired. Meantime, fresh emigrants kept arriving, including
many Palatinates from Germany. It was not a profitable country to its
reputed owners, who, in 1714, received a hundred dollars apiece from
it. But it supported its inhabitants all the better; and it was eight
years more before they supplied themselves with a court house, and
forty, before they felt the need of a printing press.

In New England, Connecticut and Rhode Island, which had suffered
comparatively little from the despotism of James, readily recovered
such minor rights as they had been deprived of. There was a dispute
between Fitz-John Winthrop and Fletcher as to the command of the local
militia, the former, with his fellow colonists, demanding that the
control be kept by the colony; Winthrop went to England and got
confirmation of his plea; and from the people, on his return, the
governorship. There were a score and a half of flourishing towns in
Connecticut, each with its meeting house and school. Little Rhode
Island recovered its charter, whether the original or a duplicate. An
act was pending in England to abrogate all colonial charters, and was
backed by the strong mercantile influence; but the French war caused it
to go over. Lord Cornbury, and Joseph Dudley, the Massachusetts-born
traitor, did their best to get a royal governor for these colonies, but
they failed; though Dudley, at the instance of Cotton Mather, was
afterward made governor of Massachusetts.

But no son of Massachusetts has so well deserved the condemnation of
history as Cotton Mather himself. Such political sins as his advocacy
of Dudley, and his opposition to the revival of the old charter, are
trifling; they might have been the result of ordinary blindness or
selfishness merely; but his part in the witchcraft delusion cannot be
so accounted for. In his persecution of the accused persons he was
actuated by a spirit of inflamed vanity and malignity truly diabolic;
and if there can be a crime which Heaven cannot forgive, assuredly
Cotton Mather steeped himself in it. He was a singular being; yet he
represented the evil tendencies of Puritanism; they drained into him,
so to say, until he became their sensible incarnation. In his person,
at last, the Puritans of Massachusetts beheld united every devilish
trait to which the tenets of their belief could incline them; and the
hideousness of the spectacle so impressed them that, from that time
forward, any further Cotton Mathers became impossible. There is no
feature in Mather's case that can be held to palliate his conduct. He
had the best education of the time, coming, as he did, from a line of
scholars, and out-Heroding them in the variety and curiousness of his
accomplishments, and in the number of his published "works"--three
hundred and eighty-three. Nothing that he produced has any original
value; but his erudition was enormous. Of "Magnalia," his chief and
representative work, it has been said that "it is a heterogeneous and
polyglot compilation of information useful and useless, of unbridled
pedantry, of religious adjuration, biographical anecdotes, political
maxims, and theories of education.... Indeed, it contains everything
except order, accuracy, sobriety, proportion, development, and upshot."
This man, born in 1663, was not yet thirty years of age when his
campaign against the witches began; indeed, he had given a hint of his
direction some years earlier. In his multifarious reading he had become
acquainted with all existing traditions and speculations concerning
witchcraft, and his profession as minister in the Calvinist communion
predisposed him to investigate all accessible details concerning the
devil. He was passionately hungry for notoriety and conspicuousness:
Tydides melior patre was the ambition he proposed to himself.

A huge memory, stored with the promiscuous rubbish of libraries, and
with facts which were transformed into rubbish by his treatment of
them, was combined in him with a diseased imagination, and a personal
vanity almost surpassing belief. His mental shallowness and consequent
restlessness rendered anything like original thought impossible to him;
and the faculty of intellectual digestion was not less beyond him. It
is probable that curiosity was the motive which originally drew him to
the study of witchcraft; a vague credence of such things was common at
the time; and in France and England many executions for the supposed
crime had taken place. Mather had no convictions on the subject; he was
incapable of convictions of any kind; and the revelation of his private
diary shows that at the very time he was wallowing in murders, and
shrieking out for ever more victims, he was in secret doubting the
truth of all religion, and coquetting with atheism. But men of no
religious faith are prone to superstitions; the man who denies God is
the first to seek for guidance from the stars. Suppose there should be
a devil?--was Mather's thought. It is not to be wondered at that such a
man should be fascinated by the notion; and we may perhaps concede to
Mather that, if at any time in his career he approached belief in
anything, the devil was the subject of his belief. Had his character
been genuine and vigorous, such a belief would have led him to plunge
into witchcraft, not as a persecutor, but as a performer; he would have
aimed to be chief at the witches' Sabbath, and to have rioted in the
terrible powers with which Satan's children were credited. But he was
far from owning this bold and trenchant fiber: though he could not
believe in God, he dared not defy Him; and still he could not refrain
from dabbling in the forbidden mysteries. Moreover, there was an
obscure and questionable faculty inherent in certain persons,
unaccountable on any recognized natural grounds, which gave support to
the witchcraft theory. We call this faculty hypnotism now; and
physiology seeks to connect it with the nervous affections of hysteria
and epilepsy. At all times, and in all quarters of the earth,
manifestations of it have not been wanting; and in Africa it has for
centuries existed as a so-called religious cult, to which in this
country the name of Hoodooism or Voodooism has been applied. It is a
savage form of devil worship, including snake-charming, and the lore of
fetiches and charms; and its professors are able to produce abnormal
effects, within certain limits, upon the nerves and imaginations of
their clients or victims. Among the negro slaves in Massachusetts in
1692, and the negro-Indian mongrels, there were persons able to
exercise this power. They attracted the attention of Cotton Mather.

Gradually, we may suppose, the idea took form in his mind that if he
could not be a witch himself, he might gain the notoriety he craved by
becoming the denouncer of witchcraft in others. Ministers in that day
still had great influence in New England, and had grasped at temporal
as well as spiritual sway, maintaining that the former should rightly
involve the latter. What a minister said, had weight; what so
well-known a minister as Cotton Mather said, would carry conviction to
many. If Mather could procure the execution of a witch or two, it could
not fail to add greatly to his spiritual glory and ascendency. It is,
of course, not to be imagined that he had any conception, beforehand,
of the extent to which the agitation he was about to begin would be
carried. But when evil is once let loose, it multiplies itself and
gains impetus, and rages like a fire. The only thing for Mather to do
was to keep abreast of the mischief which he had created. If he
faltered or relented, he would be himself destroyed. He was whirled
along with the foul storm by a mingling of terror, malice, vanity,
triumph and fascination: as repulsive and dastardly a figure as has
ever stained the records of our country. He was ready to sacrifice the
population of Massachusetts rather than confess that the deeds for
which he was responsible were based on what, in his secret soul, he
unquestionably felt was a delusion. For though he may have
half-believed in witchcraft while it presented itself to him as a
theory, yet as soon as he had reached the stage of actual examinations
and court testimony, he could not fail to perceive that the theory was
utterly devoid of reasonable foundation; that convictions could not be
had except by aid of open perjury, suppression and intimidation. Yet
Cotton Mather scrupled not to put in operation these and other devices;
to hound on the magistrates, to browbeat and sophisticate the juries,
and to scream threats, warnings and self-glorifications from the
pulpit. Needs must, when the devil drives. Had he paused, had he even
held his peace, that noose, slimy with the death-sweat of a score of
innocent victims, would have settled greedily round his own guilty
neck, and strangled his life. But Cotton Mather was too nimble, too
voluble, too false and too cowardly for the gallows; he lived to a good
age, and died in the odor of sanctity.

Immediately after the news of William's accession was known in New
England, Mather opposed the restoration of the ancient charter, because
it would have interfered with the plans of his personal political
ambition. He caused the presentation of an address to the king,
purporting to represent the desire of the majority of reputable
citizens of Boston, placing themselves at the royal disposal, without
suggesting that the charter rights be revived. Cotton Mather's father,
Increase, was the actual agent to England; but it was the views of
Cotton Mather rather than his own that he submitted to his majesty. The
blatant hypocrite had dominated his father. The king gave Massachusetts
a new charter which was entirely satisfactory to the petitioners, for
it took away the right of the people to elect their own officers and
manage their own affairs, and made the king the fountain of power and
honor. It was identical with all charters of royal colonies, except
that the council was elected jointly by the people and by its own
members. Sir William Phips, at Increase Mather's suggestion, was made
governor, and William Stoughton lieutenant-governor. The members of the
council were "every man of them a friend to the interests of the
churches," and of Cotton Mather. He did not conceal his delight. "The
time for favor is come, yea, the set time is come! Instead of my being
made a sacrifice to wicked rulers, my father-in-law, with several
related to me, and several brethren of my own church, are among the
council. The governor is not my enemy, but one whom I baptized, and one
of my own flock, and one of my dearest friends.--I obtained of the Lord
that He would use me to be a herald of His kingdom now approaching."
Such was the attitude of Cotton Mather regarding the political outlook.
Obviously the field was prepared for him to achieve his crowning
distinction as champion of God against the devil in Massachusetts. In
February of the next year he found his first opportunity.

There was in Salem a certain Reverend Samuel Parris who had a daughter,
a niece, and a negro-Indian servant called Tituba. The children were
about twelve years of age, and much in Tituba's society. Parris was an
Englishman born, and was at this time forty-one years old; he had left
Harvard College without a degree, had been in trade in Boston, and had
entered the ministry and obtained the pastorship of the Congregational
church at Danvers, then a part of Salem, three or four years before. He
had not lived at peace with his people; he had quarreled bitterly with
some of them, and the scandal had been noised abroad. He was a man of
brutal temper, and without moral integrity. These were the dramatis
personae employed by Cotton Mather in the first scene of his hideous
farce.

The children, at the critical age between childhood and puberty, were
in a condition to be readily worked upon; it is the age when the
nervous system is disorganized, the moral sense unformed, and the
imagination ignorant and unbridled. Many children are liars and
deceivers, and self-deceivers, then, who afterward develop into sanity
and goodness. But these unhappy little creatures were under the
fascination of the illiterate and abnormal mongrel, and she secretly
ravished and fascinated them with her inexplicable powers and obscure
devices. Their antics aroused suspicions in the coarse and perhaps
superstitious mind of Parris; he catechised them; the woman's husband
told what he knew; and Parris beat her till she consented to say she
was a witch. Such phenomena could only be due to witchcraft. The
cunning and seeming malignity of the children would tax belief, were it
not so familiar a fact in children; and notable also was their
histrionic ability. They were excited by the sensation they aroused,
and vain of it; they were willing to do what they could to prolong it.
But they hardly needed to invent anything; more than was necessary was
suggested to them by questions and comments. They were quick to take
hints, and improve upon them. Sarah Good, Martha Cory, Rebecca Nourse,
and all the rest, must be their victims; but God will forgive the
children, for they know not what they do. Presently, the contagion
spread; though, upon strict examination of the evidence, not nearly so
far as was supposed. Hundreds were bewildered and terrified, as well
they might be; the magistrates--Stoughton, Sewall, John Hathorne, poor
Octogenarian Bradstreet, Sir William Phips--these and others to whom it
fell to investigate and pronounce sentence--let us hope that some, if
not all of them, truly believed that their sentences were just. "God
will give you blood to drink!" was what Sarah Good said to Noyes, as
she stood on the scaffold. But why may they not have believed they were
in the right? There was Cotton Mather, the holy man, the champion
against the Evil One, the saint who walked with God, and daily lifted
up his voice in prayer and defiance and thanksgiving--he was ever at
hand, to cross-question, to insinuate, to surmise, to bluster, to
interpret, to terrify, to perplex, to vociferate: surely, this paragon
of learning and virtue must know more about the devil than any mere
layman could pretend to know; and they must accept his assurance and
guidance. "I stake my reputation," he shouted, "upon the truth of these
accusations." And he pointedly prayed that the trial might "have a good
issue." When Deliverance Hobbs was under examination, she did but cast
a glance toward the meeting house, "and," cries the Reverend gentleman,
in an ecstasy of indignation, "immediately a demon, invisibly entering
the house, tore down a part of it!" No wonder a man so gifted as he,
was conscious of a certain gratification amid all the horrors of the
diabolic visitation, for how could he regard it otherwise than as--in
his own words--"a particular defiance unto myself!" Such was the pose
which he adopted before his countrymen: that of a semi-divine, or quite
Divine man, standing between his fellow creatures and the assaults of
hell. And then Cotton Mather would go home to his secret chamber, and
write in his diary that God and religion were perhaps, after all, but
an old wives' tale.

Parris, as soon as he comprehended Mather's drift, ably seconded him.
He had his own grudges against his neighbors to work off, and nothing
could be easier. All that was needed was for one of the children, or
any one else, to affirm that they were afflicted, and perhaps to foam
at the mouth, or be contorted as in a fit, and to accuse whatever
person they chose as being the cause of their trouble. Accusation was
equivalent to condemnation; for to deny it, was to be subjected to
torture until confession was extorted; if the accused did not confess,
he or she was, according to Cotton Mather, supported by the evil one,
and being a witch, must die. If they did confess, they were spared or
executed according to circumstances. If any one expressed any doubt as
to the justice of the sentence, or as to the existence of witchcraft,
it was proof that that person was a witch. The only security was to
join the ranks of the afflicted. In the course of a few months a reign
of terror was established, and hundreds of people, some of them
citizens of distinction, were in jail or under suspicion. Twenty were
hanged on Witches' Hill, west of the town of Salem, while Cotton Mather
sate comfortably by on his horse, and assured the people that all was
well, and that the devil could sometimes assume the appearance of an
angel of light--as, indeed, he might have good cause to believe. But
the mass of the people were averse from bloodshed, and none too sure
that these executions were other than murders; and when the wife of
Governor Phips was accused, the frenzy had passed its height. It was
perceived that the community, or a part of it, had been stampeded by a
panic or infatuation. They had done and countenanced things which now
seemed impossible even to themselves. How could they have condemned the
Reverend George Burroughs on the ground that he had exhibited
remarkable physical strength, and that the witnesses against him had
pretended dumbness? "Why is the devil so loth to have testimony borne
against you?" Judge Stoughton had asked; and Cotton Mather had said
"Enough!" But was it enough, indeed? If a witness simply by holding his
peace can hang a minister of blameless life, who may escape hanging by
a witness who will talk? It was remembered that Parris had been
Burroughs's rival, and instrumental in his conviction; and now that the
frenzy was past it was easy to point out the relation between the two
facts. There, too, was the venerable Giles Cory, who had been pressed
to death, not for pleading guilty, nor yet for pleading not guilty, but
for declining to plead at all. There, once more, was John Willard, to
whom the duty of arresting accused witches had been assigned; he, as a
person of common sense and honesty, had intimated his disbelief in the
reality of witchcraft by refusing to arrest; and for this, and no other
crime, had he been hanged. Had it really come to this, then--that one
must die for having it inferred, from some act of his, that he held an
opinion on the subject of witchcraft different from that announced by
Mather and the magistrates?--It had come to precisely that, in a
community who were exiles in order to secure liberty to have what
opinions they liked. Then, it was time that the witchcraft persecutions
came to an end; and they did, as abruptly as they had begun. Mather,
indeed, and a few more, frightened lest the people, in their recovered
sanity, should turn upon them for an accounting, strove their best to
keep up the horror; but it was not to be. No more convictions could be
obtained. In February of 1693, Parris was banished from Salem; others,
except Stoughton, who remained obdurate, made public confession of
error. But Cotton Mather, the soul of the whole iniquity, shrouded
himself in a cuttle-fish cloud of turgid rhetoric, and escaped
scot-free. So great was the power of theological prestige in New
England two hundred years ago.

There is little doubt that the sincere believers in the witchcraft
delusion were very scanty. The vast majority of the people were simply
victims of moral and physical cowardice. They feared to exchange views
with one another frankly, lest their interlocutor turn out an informer.
They repeated, parrot-like, the conventional utterances--the
shibboleths--of the hour, and thus hid from one another the real
thoughts which would have scotched the mania at the outset. Once plant
mutual suspicion and dread among a people, and, for a time, you may
drive them whither you will. It was by that means that the Council of
Ten ruled in Venice, the Inquisition in Spain, and the Vehmgericht in
Germany; and it was by that means that Cotton Mather enslaved Salem.
The episode is a stain on the fair page of our history; but Cotton
Mather was the origin and agent of it; Parris may have voluntarily
assisted him, and some or all of the magistrates and others concerned
may have been his dupes; but beyond this handful, the support was never
more than perfunctory. The instant the weight of dread was lightened
everybody discovered that everybody else had believed all along that
the whole thing was either a delusion or a fraud. Until then, they had
none of them had the courage to say so--that was all. And let us not be
scornful: the kind of courage that _would_ say so is the very rarest
and highest courage in the world.

But though Cotton Mather is almost or entirely chargeable with the
guilt of the twenty murders on Witches' Hill, not to mention the
incalculable agony of soul and domestic misery incidentally occasioned,
yet it must not be forgotten that he was of Puritan stock and training,
and that false and detestable though his individual nature doubtless
was, his crimes, but for Puritanism, could not have taken the form they
did. Puritanism was prone to brood over predestination, over the flames
of hell, and him who kept them burning; it was severe in repressing
natural expressions of gayety; it was intolerant of unlicensed
opinions, and it crushed spontaneity and innocent frivolity. It aimed,
in a word, to deform human nature, and make of it somewhat rigid and
artificial. These were some of the faults of Puritanism, and it was
these which made possible such a monstrosity as Cotton Mather. He was,
in a measure, a creature of his time and place, and in this degree we
must consider Puritanism as amenable, with him, at the bar of history.
It is for this reason solely that the witchcraft episode assumes
historical importance, instead of being a side-scene of ghastly
picturesqueness. For the Puritans took it to heart; they never forgot
it; it modified their character, and gave a favorable turn to their
future. Gradually the evil of their system was purged out of it, while
the good remained; they became less harsh, but not less strong; they
were high-minded, still, but they abjured narrowness. They would not go
so far as to deny that the devil might afflict mankind, but they
declared themselves unqualified to prove it. There began in them, in
short, the dawn of human sympathies, and the growth of spiritual
humility. Cotton Mather, with all that he represented, sinks into the
mire; but the true Puritan arises, and goes forward with lightened
heart to the mighty destiny that awaits him.

As for bluff Sir William Phips, he is better remembered for his
youthful exploits of hoisting treasure from the fifty-year-old wreck of
a Spanish galleon, in the reign of King James, and of building with
some of the proceeds his "fair brick house, in the Green Lane of
Boston," than for his administration of government during his term of
office. He was an uneducated, rough-handed, rough-natured man, a
ship-carpenter by trade, and a mariner of experience; statesmanship and
diplomacy were not his proper business. A wise head as well as a strong
hand was needed at the helm of Massachusetts just at that juncture. But
he did not prevent the legislature from passing some good laws, and
from renewing the life of New England towns, which had been suppressed
by Andros. The new charter had greatly enlarged the Massachusetts
domain, which now extended over the northern and eastern regions that
included Maine; but, as we shall presently see, the obligation to
defend this territory against the French and Indians cost the colony
much more than could be recompensed by any benefit they got from it.
Phips captured Port Royal, but failed to take Quebec. The legislature,
advised by the public-spirited Elisha Cooke, kept the royal officials
in hand by refusing to vote them permanent salaries or regular
revenues. Bellomont succeeded Phips, and Dudley, in 1702, followed
Bellomont, upon the solicitation of Cotton Mather; who long ere this,
in his "Book of Memorable Providences," had shifted all blame for the
late tragic occurrences from his own shoulders to those of the
Almighty. Dudley retained the governorship till 1715. The weight of
what authority he had was on the side of restricting charter
privileges; but he could produce no measurable effect in retarding the
mighty growth of liberty. We shall not meet him again.

New Hampshire fully maintained her reputation for intractability; and
the general drift of colonial affairs toward freedom was so marked as
to become a common subject of remark in Europe. Some of the best heads
there began to suggest that such a consummation might not be
inexpedient. But before England and her Colonies were to try their
strength against one another, there were to occur the four colonial
wars, by which the colonists were unwittingly trained to meet their
most formidable and their final adversary.



CHAPTER TENTH

FIFTY YEARS OF FOOLS AND HEROES


When thieves fall out, honest men come by their own. The first clause
of this sentence may serve to describe the Colonial Wars in America;
the second, to point the moral of the American Revolution.

Columbus, and the other great mariners of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuries, might claim for their motives an admixture, at least, of
thoughts higher than mere material gain: the desire to enlarge
knowledge, to win glory, to solve problems. But the patrons and
proprietors of the adventurers had an eye single to profit. To make
money was their aim. In overland trading there was small profit and
scanty business; but the opening of the sea as a path to foreign
countries, and a revelation of their existence--and of the fortuitous
fact that they were inhabited by savages who could not defend
themselves--completely transformed the situation.

Ships could bring in months more, a hundred-fold more, merchandise than
caravans could transport in years; and the expenses of carriage were
minimized. Goods thus placed in the market could be sold at a vast
profit. This was the first obvious fact. Secondly, this profit could be
made to inure exclusively to that country whose ships made the
discovery, by the simple device of claiming, as integral parts of the
kingdom, whatever new lands they discovered; the ships of all other
nations could then be forbidden to trade there. Thirdly, colonists
could be sent out, who would serve a double use:--they would develop
and export the products of the new country; and they would constitute
an ever-increasing market for the exports of the home country.

Such was the ideal. To realize it, three things were necessary: first,
that the natives--the "heathen"--should be dominated, and either
converted or exterminated; next, that the fiat of exclusion against
other nations should be made good; and finally (most vital of all,
though the last to be considered), that the colonists themselves should
forfeit all but a fraction of their personal interests in favor of the
monopolists at home.

Now, as to the heathen, some of them, like the Caribbeans, could
be--and by Spanish methods, they were--exterminated. Others, such as
the Mexican and Central and South American tribes, could be in part
killed off, in part "converted" as it was called. Others again, like
the Indians of North America, could neither be converted nor
exterminated; but they could be in a measure conciliated, and they
could always be fought. The general result was that the natives
co-operated to a certain extent in providing articles for export
(chiefly furs), and on the other hand, delayed colonization by
occasionally massacring the first small groups of colonists. In the
long run however most of them disappeared, so far as power either for
use or for offense was concerned.

The attempt of the several colonizing powers to make their rivals keep
out of their preserves was not successful. Piracy, smuggling,
privateering, and open war were the answers of the nations to one
another's inhibitions, though, all the while, none of them questioned
the correctness of the excluding principle. Each of them practiced it
themselves, though trying to defeat its practice by others. Portugal,
the first of the foreign-trading and monopolizing nations, was early
forced out of the business by more powerful rivals; Holland was the
first to call the principle itself in question, and to fight in the
cause of free commerce; though even she had her little private
treasure-box in Java. Spain's commerce was, during the next centuries,
seriously impaired by the growing might of England. France was the next
to suffer; and finally England, after meeting with much opposition from
her own colonies, was called upon to confront a European coalition; and
while she was putting forth her strength to overcome that, her colonies
revolted, and achieved their independence. Such was the history and
fate of the colonial system; though Spain still retained much of her
American possessions (owing to peculiar conditions) for years afterward.

But England might have retained her settlements too, so far as Europe
was concerned; the real cause of her discomfiture lay in the fact that
her colonists were mainly people of her own blood, all of them with an
inextinguishable love of liberty, which was fostered and confirmed by
their marriage with the wilderness; and many of whom were also actuated
by considerations of religion and conscience, the value of which they
placed above everything else. They wished to be "loyal," but they would
not surrender what they termed innate rights; they would not be taxed
without representation, nor be debarred from manufacturing; nor consent
to make England their sole depot and source of supplies. They would not
surrender their privilege to be governed by representatives elected by
themselves. England, as we have seen, contended against this spirit by
all manner of more or less successful enactments and acts of despotism;
until at last, near the opening of the Eighteenth Century, it became
evident to a few far-seeing persons on both sides that the matter could
only be settled by open force. But this method of arbitrament was
postponed for half a century by the Colonial Wars, which made of the
colonists a united people, and educated them, from farmers and traders,
into a military nation. Then the war came, and the United States was
its consequence.

The Colonial Wars were between England on one side, and Spain and
France on the other. Spain was not a serious foe, or obstacle; England
had no special hankering after Florida and Mexico, and she knew nothing
about the great Californian region. But France harried her on the
north, and pushed her back on the west, the first collisions in this
direction occurring at the Alleghanies and along the Ohio River. France
had discovered, claimed, and in a certain sense occupied, a huge wedge
of the present United States: an area which (apart from Canada)
extended from Maine to Oregon, and down in converging lines to the Gulf
of Mexico. They called it Louisiana. The story of the men who explored
it is a story of heroism, devotion, energy and sublime courage perhaps
unequaled in the history of the world. But France failed to follow up
these men with substantial colonies. Colonies could not help the fur
trade at the north, and the climate there was anything but attractive;
and mishaps of various kinds prevented the colonizing of the great
Mississippi valley. There was a little French settlement near the
mouths of that river, the descendants of which still give character to
New Orleans; but the rest of the enormous triangle was occupied chiefly
by missionaries and trappers, and, during the wars, with the operating
military forces. France would have made a far less effective resistance
than she did, had she not observed, from the first, the policy of
allying herself with the Indian tribes, and even incorporating them
with herself. All converted Indians were French citizens by law; the
French soldiers and settlers intermarried to a large extent with the
red men, and the half-breed became almost a race of itself. The savages
took much more kindly to the picturesque and emotional Church of Rome
than to the gloomy severities of the Puritan Calvinists; the "praying
Indians" were numerous; and the Cross became a real link between the
red men and the white. This fact was of immense value in the wars with
the English; and had it not been for the neutrality or active
friendliness of a group of tribes whom the Jesuit missionaries had
failed to win, the English colonies might have been quite obliterated.
The policy of employing savages in warfare between civilized states was
denounced then and afterward; it led to the perpetration of sickening
barbarities; but it was France's only chance, and, speaking
practically, it was hardly avoidable. Besides, the English did not
hesitate to enlist Indians on their side, when they could. Had the
savages fought after the manner of the white men, it would have been
well enough; but on the contrary, they imposed their methods upon the
whites; and most of the conflicts had more of the character of
massacres than of battles. Women and children were mercilessly slain,
or carried into captivity. But it must be remembered that the American
continent, at that time, did not admit of such tactics as were employed
in Europe--as Braddock found to his cost; operations must be chiefly by
ambuscade and surprise; when the town or the fort was captured, it was
not easy to restrain the wild men; and if they plied the tomahawk
without regard to sex or age, the white soldiers, little less savage,
readily learned to follow their example. After all, the wars were
necessarily for extermination, and there is no better way to
exterminate a people--as Spain has uniformly shown from the beginning
to the end of her history--than by murdering their women and children.
They are "innocent," no doubt, so far as active hostilities are
concerned; but they breed, or become, men and thereby threaten the
future. Moreover, not a few of the women did deeds of warlike valor
themselves. It was a savage time, and war has its hideous side always,
and in this period seemed to have hardly any other.

The pioneering on this continent of the Spanish and the French, though
in itself a captivating story, cannot properly be dwelt on in a history
of the growth of the American principle. Ponce de Leon traversed
Florida in the first quarter of the Sixteenth Century, hunting for the
Fountain of Immortality, and finding death. Hernando de Soto wandered
over the area of several of our present Southern States, and discovered
the lower reaches of the Mississippi; he was a man of blood, and his
blood was shed. Some score of years later Spaniards massacred the
Huguenot colony at St. Augustine, and built that oldest of American
cities. Beyond this, on the Atlantic slope, they never proceeded,
having enough to do further south. But they lay claim, even in these
closing years of the Nineteenth Century, to the entire American
continent--"if they had their rights."

The French began their American career with an Italian employé,
Verrazano, who spied out the coast from Florida to Newfoundland in
1524. Then Cartier peered into the wide mouth of the St. Lawrence, and
tried to get to India by that route, but got no further than the
present Montreal. In the next century, Champlain, one of the great
explorers and the first governor of Canada, laid the corner-stone of
Quebec; it became at once the center of Canadian trade which it has
ever since remained. This was in 1608. In respect of enterprise as
explorers, the French easily surpassed the farm-loving, home-building,
multiplying colonists of England. But England took advantage of French
discoveries, and stayed, and prevailed. God makes men help each other
in their own despite.

Richelieu said in 1627 that the name, New France, designated the whole
continent of America from the North Pole down to Florida. The Jesuits,
who arose as a counteracting force to Luther and the Reformation,
supplanted the Franciscans as missionaries among the heathen, and
performed what can only be called prodigies of self-sacrifice and
intrepidity. Loyola was a worthy antagonist of Calvin, and the first
achievements of his followers were the more striking. But the
magnificent exploits of these men were not the preliminary of
commensurate colonization. The spirit of Calvin inspired large bodies
of men and women to establish themselves in the wilderness in order to
cultivate his doctrines without interference; the spirit of Loyola
embodied no new religious principle; it simply kindled individuals to
fresh exertions to promulgate the unchanging dogmas of the Roman
Church. The Jesuits were leaders without followers; their mission was
to bring the Church to the heathen, and the heathen into the Church;
and the impressiveness of their activity was due to the daring and
faith which pitted units against thousands, and refused to accept
defeat. They were the knight-errantry of religion. The fame of their
deeds inspired enthusiasm in France, so that noble women gave up their
luxurious lives, for the sake of planting faith in the inhospitable
immensities of the Canadian forests; but the mass of the common people
were not stimulated or attracted; the profits of the fur-trade employed
but a handful; and the blood of the Jesuit martyrs--none more genuine
ever died--was poured out almost without practical results. Our
estimate of human nature is exalted; but there are no happy communities
to-day which owe their existence to the Jesuit pioneers. The priests
themselves were wifeless and childless, and the family hearthstone
could not be planted on the sites of their immolations and triumphs.
Nor were the disciples of Loyola aided, as were the Calvinists, by
persecution at home. All alike were good Catholics. But had the Jesuits
advocated but a single principle of human freedom, France might have
been mistress of America to-day.

So, under the One Hundred Assistants, as the French colonizing Company
of the early Seventeenth Century was called, missions were dotted
throughout the loneliness and terror of the wilderness; Breboeuf and
Daniel did their work and met their fate; Raymbault carried the cross
to Lake Superior; Gabriel Dreuilettes came down the Kennebec; Jogues
was tortured by the Mohawks; Lallemand shed his blood serenely;
Chaumont and Dablon built their chapel where now stands Syracuse; and
after all, there stood the primeval forests, pathless as before, and
the red men were but partially and transiently affected. The Hundred
Assistants were dissolved, and a new colonial organization was
operating in 1664; soldiers were sent over, and the Jesuits, still
unweariedly in the van, pushed westward to Michigan, and Marquette and
Joliet, two young men of thirty-six and twenty-seven, discovered the
Mississippi, and descended it as far as Des Moines; but still, all the
inhabitants of New France could easily have mustered in a ten-acre
field. Then, in 1666 came Robert Cavelier La Salle, a cadet of a good
family, educated in a Jesuit seminary, but destined to incur the enmity
of the order, and at last to perish, not indeed at their hands, but in
consequence of conditions largely due to them. The towering genius of
this young man--he was but just past his majority when he came to
Montreal, and he was murdered by his treacherous traveling companion,
Duhaut, on a branch of Trinity River in Texas, before he had reached
the age of five and forty--his indomitable courage, his tact and
firmness in dealing with all kinds of men, from the Grand Monarch to
the humblest savage, his great thoughts and his wonderful exploits, his
brilliant fortune and his appalling calamities, both of which he met
with an equal mind:--these qualities and the events which displayed
them make La Salle the peer, at least, of any of his countrymen of that
age. What must be the temper of a man who, after encountering and
overcoming incredible opposition, after being the victim of unrelenting
misfortune, including loss of means, friends, and credit, of deadly
fevers, of shipwreck,--could rise to his feet amid the destruction of
all that he had labored for twenty years to build up, and confidently
and cheerfully undertake the enterprise of traveling on foot from
Galveston in Texas to Montreal in Canada, to ask for help to
re-establish his colony? It is a formidable journey to-day, with all
the appliances of steam and the luxury of food and accommodation that
science and ingenuity can frame; it would be a portentous trip for the
most accomplished modern pedestrian, assisted though he would be by
roads, friendly wayside inns and farms, maps of the route, and
hobnailed walking boots. La Salle undertook it with thousands of miles
of uncharted wilderness before him, through tribes assumed to be
hostile till they proved themselves otherwise, with doubtful and
quarreling companions, and shod with moccasins of green hide. Even of
the Frenchmen whom he might meet after reaching Illinois, the majority,
being under Jesuit influence, would be hostile. But he had faced and
conquered difficulties as great as these, and he had no fear. At the
time the scoundrel Duhaut shot him from ambush, he was making hopeful
progress. But it was decreed that France was not to stay in America. La
Salle discovered the Ohio and the Illinois, built Fort Crevecoeur, and
started a colony on the coast of Texas; he received a patent of
nobility, and lost his fortune and his life. The pathos of such a death
lies in the consideration that his plans died with him. It was the year
before the accession of William of Orange; and the first war with
France began two years later.

France, after all drawbacks, was far from being a foe to be slighted.
The English colonists outnumbered hers, but hers were all soldiers;
they had trained the Indians to the use of firearms, had taught them
how to build forts, and by treating them as equals, had won the
confidence and friendship of many of them. The English colonies, on the
other hand, had as yet no idea of co-operation; each had its own ideas
and ways of existence; they had never met and formed acquaintance with
one another through a common congress of representatives. They were
planters, farmers and merchants, with no further knowledge of war than
was to be gained by repelling the attacks of savages, and retaliating
in kind. They had the friendship of the Five Nations, and they received
help from English regiments. But the latter had no experience of forest
fighting, and made several times the fatal mistake of undervaluing
their enemy, as well as clinging to impracticable formations and
tactics. The English officers did not conceal their contempt for the
"provincial" troops, who were not, indeed, comely to look at from the
conventional military standpoint, but who bore the brunt of the
fighting, won most of the successes, and were entirely capable of
resenting the slights to which they were unjustly subjected. What was
quite as important, bearing in mind what was to happen in 1775, they
learned to gauge the British fighting capacity, and did not fear, when
the time came, to match themselves against it.

King William's War lasted from 1689 to 1697. Louis XIV. had refused to
recognize William as a legitimate king of England, and undertook to
champion the cause of the dethroned James. The conduct of the war in
Europe does not belong to our inquiry. The proper course for the French
to have adopted in America would have been to encourage the English
colonies to revolt against the king; but the statesmanship of that age
had not conceived the idea of colonial independence. Besides, the
colonies would not at that epoch have fallen in with the scheme; they
might have been influenced to rise against a Stuart, but not against a
William. There was no general plan of campaign on either side. There
was no question as yet about the western borders. There was but one
point of contact of New France and the English colonies--the northern
boundaries of New England and New York. The position of the English,
strung along a thousand miles of the Atlantic coast, did not favor
concentration against the enemy, and still less was it possible for the
latter, with their small force, to march south and overrun the country.
What could be done then? Obviously, nothing but to make incursions
across the line, after the style of the English and Scottish border
warfare. Nothing could be gained, except the making of each other
miserable. But that was enough, since two kings, neither of whom any of
the combatants had seen, were angry with each other three thousand
miles away. Louis does not admit the right of William, doesn't
he?--says the Massachusetts farmer to the Canadian coureur des bois;
and without more ado they fly at each others' throats.

The successes, such as they were, were chiefly on the side of the
French. Small parties of Indians, or of French and Indians combined,
would steal down upon the New York and New England farms and villages,
suddenly leap out upon the man and his sons working in their clearings,
upon the woman and her children in the hut: a whoop, a popping of
musket shots and whistling of arrows, then the vicious swish and crash
of the murderous tomahawk, followed by the dexterous twist of the
scalping-knife, and the snatching of the tuft of hair from the bleeding
skull. That is all--but, no: there still remains a baby or two who must
be caught up by the leg, and have its brains dashed out on the
door-jamb; and if any able-bodied persons survive, they are to be
loaded with their own household goods, and driven hundreds of miles
over snows, or through heats, to Canada, as slaves. Should they drop by
the way, as Mrs. Williams did, down comes the tomahawk again. Or
perhaps a Mrs. Dustin learns how to use the weapon so as to kill at a
blow, and that night puts her knowledge to the proof on the skulls of
ten sleeping savages, and so escapes. Occasionally there is a more
important massacre, like that at Schenectady, or Deerfield. But these
Indian surprises are not only revolting, but monotonous to weariness,
and, as they accomplished nothing but a given number of murders, there
is nothing to be learned from them. They are meaningless; and we can
hardly imagine even the Grand Monarch, or William of Orange, being
elated or depressed by their details.

There were no French farms or small villages to be attacked in
requital, so it was necessary for the English to proceed against Port
Royal or Quebec. The aged but bloodthirsty Frontenac was governor of
Canada at this time, and proved himself able (aided by the imbecility
of the attack) to defend it. In March of 1690 a sort of congress had
met at Albany, which sent word to the several colonial governors to
dispatch commissioners to Rhode Island for a general conference for
adopting measures of defense and offense.

The delegates met in May or the last of April, at New York, and decided
to conquer Canada by a two-headed campaign; one army to go by way of
Lake Champlain to Montreal, while a fleet should proceed against
Quebec. Sir William Phips of Massachusetts was off to Port Royal within
four weeks, and took it without an effort, there being hardly any one
to defend it. But Leisler of New York and Winthrop of Connecticut
quarreled at Lake Champlain, and that part of the plan came to a
disgraceful end forthwith. A month or so later, Phips was blundering
pilotless into the St. Lawrence, with two thousand Massachusetts men on
thirty-four vessels. Their coming had been prepared for, and when they
demanded the surrender of the impregnable fortress, with a garrison
more numerous than themselves, they were answered with jeers; and it is
painful to add that they turned round and set out for home again
without striking a blow. A storm completed their discomfiture; and when
Phips at last brought what was left of his fleet into harbor, he found
the treasury empty, and was forced to issue paper money to pay his
bills.

No further talk of "On to Quebec" was heard for some time. Port Royal
was retaken by a French vessel. Parties of Indians, encouraged by the
Jesuits, again stole over the border and did the familiar work.
Schuyler, on the English side, succeeded in making a successful foray
in 1691; and a fort was built at Pemaquid--to be taken, five years
afterward, by Iberville and Castin. In 1693 an English fleet, which had
been beaten at Martinique, came to Boston with orders to conquer
Canada; but as it was manned by warriors half of whom were dying of
malignant yellow fever, Canada was spared once more. The only really
formidable enemies that Frontenac could discover were the Five Nations,
whom he tried in vain to frighten or to conciliate. He himself, at the
age of seventy-four, headed the last expedition against them, in the
summer of 1696. It returned without having accomplished anything except
the burning of villages and the laying waste of lands. The following
year peace was signed at Ryswick, a village in South Holland. France
had done well in the field and by negotiations; but England had
sustained no serious reverses, and having borrowed money from a group
of private capitalists, whom it chartered as the Bank of England in
1694, was financially stronger than ever. Louis accepted the results of
the English Revolution, but kept his American holdings; and the
boundaries between these and the English colonies were not settled. The
Five Nations were not pacified till 1700. The French continued their
occupation of the Mississippi basin, and in 1699 Lemoine Iberville
sailed for the Mississippi, and built a fort on the bay of Biloxi.
Communication was now established between the Gulf of Mexico and
Quebec. The English, through the agency of a New Jerseyman named Coxe,
and a forged journal of exploration by Hennepin, tried to get a
foothold on the great river, but the attempt was fruitless. Fruitless,
likewise, were French efforts to find gold, or, indeed, to establish a
substantial colony themselves in the feverish Louisiana region.
Iberville caught the yellow plague and never fully recovered; and the
desert-girded fort at Mobile seemed a small result for so much exertion.

In truth, on both sides of the Atlantic, peace existed nowhere except
on the paper signed at Ryswick; and in 1702 William saw that he must
either fight again, or submit to a union between France and Spain,
Louis XIV. becoming, by the death without issue of the Spanish king,
sovereign of both countries, to the upsetting of the European balance
of power. Spain had become a nonentity; she had no money, no navy, no
commerce, no manufactures, and a population reduced by emigration, and
by the expulsion of Jews and Moors, to about seven millions: nothing
remained to her but that "pride" of which she was always so solicitous,
based as it was upon her achievements as a robber, a murderer, a despot
and a bigot. She now had no king, which was the least of her losses,
but gave her the power of disturbing Europe by lapsing to the French
Bourbons.

William himself was close to death, and died before the opening year of
the war was over. Louis was alive, and was to remain alive for thirteen
years longer; but he was sixty-four, was becoming weary and
discouraged, and had lost his ministers and generals. On the English
side was Marlborough; and the battle of Blenheim, not to speak of the
European combination against France, showed how the game was going. But
the peace of Utrecht in 1713, though it lasted thirty years, was not
based on justice, and could not stand. Spain was deprived of her
possessions in the Netherlands, but was allowed to keep her colonies,
and the loss of Gibraltar confirmed her hatred of England. Belgium,
Antwerp and Austria were wronged, and France was insulted by the
destruction of Dunkirk harbor. England embarked with her whole heart in
the African slave trade, securing the monopoly of importing negroes
into the West Indies for thirty years, and being the exclusive dealer
in the same commodity along the Atlantic coast. Half the stock in the
business was owned by the English people, and the other half was
divided equally between Queen Anne and Philip of Spain. The profits
were enormous. Meanwhile the treaty between Spain and England allowed
and legitimatized the smuggling operations of the latter in the West
Indies, a measure which was sure to involve our colonies sooner or
later in the irrepressible conflict. England, again, got Hudson's Bay,
Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, but not the Mississippi valley, from France.
Boundary lines were not accurately determined; and could not be until
the wars between 1744 and 1763 finally decided these and other matters
in England's favor. The most commendable clause in the treaty was the
one inserted by Bolingbroke that defined contraband, and the rights of
blockade, and laid down the rule that free ships should give freedom to
goods carried in them.

Anne, a daughter of James II., but a partisan of William, succeeded him
in 1702 at the age of thirty-seven; she was herself governed by the
Marlboroughs and Mrs. Mashamam--an intelligent woman of humble birth,
who became keeper of her majesty's privy purse. The war which the queen
inherited, and which was called by her name, lasted till the final year
of her reign. Only New England on the north and Carolina on the south
were participants in the fray on this side, and no great glory or
advantage accrued to either. New York was sheltered by the neutrality
of the Five Nations, and Pennsylvania, Virginia and the rest were
beyond the reach of French operations.

The force raised by South Carolina to capture St. Augustine had
expected to receive cannon for the siege from Jamaica; but the cannon
failed them, and they retreated with nothing to show but a debt which
they liquidated in paper. They had better luck with an expedition to
sever the Spanish line of communication with Louisiana; the Spanish and
Indians were beaten in December, 1705, and the neighboring inhabitants
along the Gulf emigrated to South Carolina. Then the French set out to
take Charleston; but the Huguenots were mindful of St. Bartholomew and
of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and they set upon the
invaders when they landed, and slew three out of every eight of them.
The South Carolinians were let alone thereafter.

In the north, the French secured the neutrality of the Senecas, but the
English failed to do the like with the Abenakis, and the massacring
season set in with marked severity on the Maine border in the summer of
1703. It was in the ensuing winter that the Deerfield affair took
place; the crusted snow was so deep that it not only gave the French
and Indian war party good walking down from Canada, but enabled them to
mount up the drifts against the palisades of the town and leap down
inside. The sentinels were not on guard that morning, though, warned by
the Mohawks, the people had been looking for the attack all winter
long. What is to be said of these tragedies? When we have realized the
awful pang in a mother's heart, wakened from sleep by that shrill,
triumphant yell of the Indian, and knowing that in a moment she will
see her children's faces covered with the blood and brains from their
crushed skulls, we shall have nothing more to learn from Indian
warfare. How many mothers felt that pang in the pale dawn of that
frosty morning in Deerfield? After the war party had done the work, and
departed exulting with their captives, how many motionless corpses, in
what ghastly attitudes, lay huddled in the darksome rooms of the little
houses, or were tossed upon the trodden snow without, the looks of
mortal agony frozen on their features? But you will hear the howl of
the wolves by-and-by; and the black bear will come shuffling and
sniffing through the broken doors; and when the frightful feast is
over, there will be, in place of these poses of death, only disordered
heaps of gnawed bones, and shreds of garments rent asunder, and the
grin of half-eaten skulls. Nothing else remains of a happy and innocent
community. Why were they killed? Had they harmed their killers? Was any
military advantage gained by their death?--They had harmed no one, and
nothing was gained, or pretended to be gained, by their murder: nothing
except to establish the principle that, since two countries in Europe
were at war, those emigrants of theirs who had voyaged hither in quest
of peace and happiness should lie in wait to destroy one another. Human
sympathies have, sometimes, strange ways of avouching themselves.

People become accustomed even to massacre. But the children born in
these years, who were themselves to be the fathers and mothers of the
generation of the Revolution, must have sucked in stern and fierce
qualities with the milk from their mothers' breasts. No one, even in
the midst of Massachusetts, was safe during that first decade of the
Eighteenth Century. A single Indian, in search of glory, would spend
weeks in creeping southward from the far border; he would await his
chance long and patiently; he would leap out, and strike, and vanish
again, leaving that silent horror behind him. Such deeds, and the
constant possibility of them, left their mark upon the whole
population. They grew up familiar with violent death in its most
terrible forms. The effect of Indian warfare upon the natures of those
who engage in it, or are subjected to its perils, is different from
that of what we must call civilized fighting. The end as well as the
aim of the Indian's battle is death--a scalp. Murder for the mere
pleasure of murdering has an influence upon a community far more
sinister than that of death by war waged for recognizable causes. The
Puritans of the Eighteenth Century were another people than those of
the Seventeenth. There had been reason in the early Indian struggles,
when the savages might have hoped to exterminate the settlers and leave
their wilderness a wilderness once more; but there could be no such
hope now. The desire for revenge was awakened and fostered as it had
never been before. Many other circumstances combined to modify the
character of the people of New England during this century; but perhaps
this new capacity for revenge was not the least potent of the
influences that made the seven years of the Revolution possible.

Peter Schuyler protested in vain against the "savage and boundless
butchery" into which the conflict between "Christian princes, bound to
the exactest laws of honor and generosity," was degenerating; but the
only way to stop it appeared to be to extirpate the perpetrators; and
to that end a fifth part of the population were constantly in arms. The
musket became more familiar to their hands than the plow and spade; and
their marksmanship was near perfection. They gradually developed a
system of tactics of their own, foreign to the manuals. The first thing
you were aware of in the provincial soldier was the puff of smoke from
the muzzle of his weapon; almost simultaneously came the thud of his
bullet in your breast, or crashing through your brain. He loaded his
gun lying on his back beneath the ferns and shrubbery; he advanced or
retreated invisibly, from tree to tree. Your only means of estimating
his numbers was from your own losses. It was thus that the American
troops afterward gained their reputation of being almost invincible
behind an intrenchment; it gave its character to the engagements at
Concord and along the Boston Road, and sent hundreds of redcoats to
death on the slopes of Bunker Hill. It was not magnificent--to look at;
but it was war; combined with the European tactics acquired later on,
it survived reverses that would have driven other troops from the
field, and, with Washington at the head, won our independence at last.

The least revolting feature of the Indian warfare was the habit they
acquired, through French suggestion doubtless, of taking large numbers
of persons captive, and carrying them north. If they weakened on the
journey, they were of course tomahawked out of the way at once; but if
they survived, they were either sold as slaves to the Canadians, or
were kept by the Indians, who adopted them into their tribes, having no
system of slavery. Many a woman and little girl from New England became
the mother of Indian children; and when the captives were young enough
at the beginning, they generally grew to love the wild life too well to
leave it. Indeed, they were generally treated well by both the
Canadians and the Indians after they got to their destination. On the
other hand, there were the fathers and mothers and relatives of the
lost planning their redemption or rescue, and raising money to buy them
back. Many a thrilling tale could be told of these episodes. But we
must imagine beautiful young women, who had been taken away in
childhood, found after years of heart-breaking search and asked to
return to their homes. What was their home? They had forgotten New
England, and those who loved them and had sorrowed for them there. The
eyes of these young women, clear and bright, had a wildness in their
look that is never seen in the children of civilization; their faces
were tanned by sun and breeze, their figures lithe and athletic, their
dress of deerskin and wampum, their light feet clad in moccasins; their
tongues and ears were strange to the language of their childhood homes.
No: they would not return. Sometimes, curiosity, or a vague
expectation, would induce them to revisit those who yearned for them;
but, having arrived, they received the embraces of their own flesh and
blood shyly and coldly; they were stifled and hampered by the houses,
the customs, the ordered ways of white people's existence. A night must
come when they would arise silently, resume with a deep in-breathing of
delight the deerskin raiment, and be gone without one last loving look
at the faces of those who had given them life, but from whom their
souls were forever parted. There is a harrowing mystery in these
estrangements: how strong, and yet how helpless is the human heart; all
the world cannot break the bonds it ties, nor can all the world tie
them again, once the heart itself has dissolved them.

Thus, in more ways than one, the blood of the English colonists became
wedded to the soil of the wilderness, if wilderness the settlements
could now be called. And they became like the captives we have just
been imagining, who cared no longer for the land and the people that
had been their home. Not more because they were estranged by England's
behavior than because they had formed new attachments beside which the
old ones seemed pale, were they now able to contemplate with composure
the idea of a final separation. America was no longer England's
daughter. She had acquired a life of her own, and could look forward to
a destiny which the older country could never share. The ways of the
two had parted more fully than either, as yet, quite realized; and if
they were ever to meet again hereafter, it must be the older, and not
the younger, who must change.

Apart from the Indian episodes, little was done until 1710, when a
large fleet left Boston and again captured Port Royal, to which the
name of Annapolis was given as a compliment to the snuffy little woman
who sat on the English throne. This success was made the basis of a
proposition to put an end to the development of the French settlements
west of the Alleghanies. It was represented to the English government
that the entire Indian population in the west was being amalgamated
with the French; the Jesuits ensnaring them on the spiritual side, and
the intermarrying system on the other. The English Secretary of State
was Bolingbroke--or Saint-John as he was then--a man of three and
thirty, brilliant, graceful, gifted, versatile; but without principle
or constancy, who never emancipated his superb intellect from his
restless and sensuous nature. After hearing what the American envoys
had to say, and thinking the matter over, Saint-John made up his mind
that it could do no harm, as a beginning, to capture Quebec; and that
being safe in English hands, the rest of the programme could be
finished at leisure. Seven regiments of Marlborough's veterans, the
best soldiers in the world at that time, a battalion of marines, and
fifteen men-of-war, were intrusted to the utterly incompetent and
preposterous Hovenden Walker, with the not less absurd Jack Hill,
brother of Mrs. Masham, as second in command. In short, the expedition
was what would now be called a "job" for the favorites and hangers-on
of the Court; the taking of the Canadian fortress was deemed so easy a
feat that even fools and Merry-Andrews could accomplish it. The
Americans had meantime made their preparations to co-operate with this
imposing armada; an army of colonists and Iroquois were at Albany,
ready for a dash on Montreal. But week after week passed away, and the
fleet, having got to Boston, seemed unable to get away from it. No
doubt Hovenden, Hill and the rest of the rabble were enjoying
themselves in the Puritan capital. The Boston of stern-visaged,
sad-garmented, scripture-quoting men and women, of unpaved streets and
mean houses, was gone; Boston in the first quarter of the Eighteenth
Century was a city--a place of gayety, fashion and almost luxury. The
scarlet coats of the British officers made the narrow but
briskly-moving streets brilliant; but even without them, the
embroidered coats, silken small clothes and clocked stockings, powdered
wigs and cocked hats of the fine gentlemen, and the wide hoops and
imposing head-dresses of the women, made a handsome show. People of
many nationalities mingled in the throng, for commerce had brought the
world in all its various forms to the home of the prayers of Winthrop
and Higginson; the royal governors maintained a fitting state, and
traveled Americans, then as now, brought back with them from Europe the
freshest ideas of modishness and style. There were folk of quality
there, personages of importance and dignity, forming an inner
aristocratic circle who conversed of London and the Court, and whose
august society it was the dear ambition of the lesser lights to ape, if
they could not join it. Democratic manners were at a discount in these
little hotbeds of amateur cockneyism; the gloomy severities of the
old-fashioned religion were put aside; there was an increasing gap
between the higher and the lower orders of the population. This
appearance was no doubt superficial; and the beau-monde is never so
numerous as its conspicuousness leads one to imagine. When the
rumblings of the Revolutionary earthquake began to make themselves
heard in earnest, the gingerbread aristocracy came tumbling down in a
hurry, and the old, invincible spirit, temporarily screened by the
waving of scented handkerchiefs, the flutter of fans, and the swish of
hoop-skirts, made itself once more manifest and dominant. But that
epoch was still far off; for the present court was paid to Hovenden and
his officers; and the British coffee-house in King Street was a noble
sight.

What bottles of wine those warriors drank, what snuff they took, what
long pipes they smoked, how they swore and ruffled, and what tales they
told of Marlborough and the wars! The British army swore frightfully in
Flanders, and in King Street, too. There, also, they read the news in
the newspapers of the day, and discussed matters of high policy and
strategy, while the civilians listened with respectful admiration. And
see how that dapper young officer seated in the window arches his
handsome eyebrows and smirks as two pretty Boston girls go by! Yes, it
is no wonder that the British fleet needed a long time to refit in
Boston harbor, before going up to annihilate those French jumping-jacks
on the banks of the St. Lawrence. "La, Captain, I hope you won't get
hurt!" says pretty Miss Betty, with her white wig and her beauty spots;
and that heroic young gentleman lifts her hand to his lips, and swears
deeply that, for a glance from her bright eyes, he would go forth and
capture Quebec single-handed.

While these dalliances were in progress, the French jumping-jacks were
putting things in order to receive their expected guests in a becoming
manner. They held a great pow-wow of representatives of Indian tribes
from all parts of the seat of the projected war, and bound them by
compacts to their assistance. Everybody, even the women, worked on the
fortifications, or on anything that might aid in the common defense.
Before the end of August, at which time the outlookers reported signs
of a fleet of near a hundred sail, flying the British flag, all was
ready for them in the French strongholds. So now let the mighty combat
begin.

But it was not to come this time: the era of William Pitt and General
Wolfe was nearly half a century distant. The latter would not be born
for sixteen years, and the former was a pap-eating babe of three.
Meanwhile the redoubtable Hovenden was snoring in bed, while his fleet
was struggling in a dense fog at night, being driven on the shoals of
the Egg Islands near the mouth of the St. Lawrence. "For the Lord's
sake, come on deck!" roars Captain Goddard, thrusting his head into the
cabin for the second time, "or we shall all be lost!" Thus adjured, the
old imbecile huddles on his dressing gown and slippers, and finds
himself, sure enough, close on a lee shore. He made shift to get his
own vessel out of harm's way, but eight others went down, and near nine
hundred men were drowned. "Impossible to go on," was the vote of the
council of war the next morning; and "It's all for the best," added
this remarkable admiral; "for had we got to Quebec, ten or twelve
thousand of us must have perished of cold and hunger; Providence took
eight hundred to save the rest!"

So back they went, with their tails between their legs, without having
had a glimpse of the citadel which they were to have captured without
an effort; and of course the army waiting at Albany for the word to
advance got news of a different color, and Montreal was as safe as
Quebec. In the west, the Foxes, having planned an attack on Detroit,
did really lay siege to it; but Du Buisson, who defended it, summoned a
swarm of Indian allies to his aid, and the Foxes found that the boot
was on the other leg; they were all either slain or carried into
slavery. Down in the Carolinas, a party of Tuscaroras attacked a
settlement of Palatines near Pamlico Sound, and wiped them out; and
some Huguenots at Bath fared little better. Disputes between the
governor and the burgesses prevented aid from Virginia; but Barnwell of
South Carolina succeeded in making terms with the enemy. A desultory
and exhausting warfare continued however, complicated with an outbreak
of yellow fever, and it was not until 1713 that the Tuscaroras were
driven finally out of the country, and were incorporated with the
Iroquois in the north. The war in Europe had by that time come also to
an end, and the treaty of Utrecht brought about an ambiguous peace for
a generation.

George I. now became king of England; because he was the son of Sophia,
granddaughter of James I., and professed the Protestant religion. He
was a Hanoverian German, and did not understand the English language;
he was stupid and disreputable, and better fitted to administer a
German bierstube than a great kingdom. But the Act of Settlement of
1701 had stipulated that if William or Anne died childless, the
Protestant issue of Sophia should succeed. That such a man should prove
an acceptable sovereign both to Great Britain and her American
colonies, showed that the individuality on the throne had become
secondary to the principles which he stood for; besides, George
profited by the easy, sagacious, good-humored leadership of that
unprincipled but common-sensible man-of-the-world, Sir Robert Walpole,
who was prime minister from 1715 to 1741, with an interval of only a
couple of years. Walpole's aim was to avoid wars and develop commerce
and manufactures; and while he lived, the colonies enjoyed immunity
from conflicts with the French and Spanish.

They were not to forget the use of arms, however; for the Indians were
inevitably encroached upon by the expanding white population, and
resented it in the usual way. In 1715 the Yemasses began a massacre on
the Carolina borders; they were driven off by Charles Craven, after the
colonists had lost four hundred men. The proprietors had given no help
in the war, and after it was over, the colony renounced allegiance to
them, and the English government supported their revolt, regarding it
in the light of an act of loyalty to George. Francis Nicholson, a
governor by profession, and of great experience in that calling, was
appointed royal governor, and made peace with the tribes; and in 1729
the crown bought out the claims of the proprietors. North Carolina,
without a revolt, enjoyed the benefits obtained by their southern
brethren. The Cherokees became a buffer against the encroachments of
the French from the west.

In the north, meanwhile, the Abenakis, in sympathy with the French,
claimed the region between the Kennebec and the St. Croix, and applied
to the French for assistance. Sebastian Rasles, a saintly Jesuit priest
and Indian missionary, had made his abode at Norridgwock on the
Kennebec; he was regarded by Massachusetts as an instigator of the
enemy. They seized his post, he escaping for the time; the Indians
burned Brunswick; but in 1723 Westbrooke with a company of hardy
provincials, who knew more of Indian warfare than the Indians
themselves, attacked an Indian fort near the present Bangor and
destroyed it; the next year Norridgwock was surprised, and Rasles
slain. He met his death with the sublime cheerfulness and courage which
were the badge of his order. French influence in northeastern
Massachusetts was at an end, and John Lovewell, before he lost his life
by an ambush of Saco Indians at Battle Brook, had made it necessary for
the Indians to sue for peace. Commerce took the place of religion as a
subjugating force, and an era of prosperity began for the northeastern
settlements.

There was no settled boundary between northern New York and the French
regions. Each party used diplomatic devices to gain advantage. Both
built trading stations on doubtful territory, which developed into
forts. Burnet of New York founded Oswego in 1727, and gained a strip of
land from the Iroquois; France built a fort on Lake Champlain in 1731.
Six years before that, they had established, by the agency of the
sagacious trader Joncaire, a not less important fort at Niagara. Upon
the whole, the French gained the better of their rivals in these
negotiations.

Louisiana, as the French possessions, or claims, south of Canada were
called, was meanwhile bidding fair to cover most of the continent west
of the Alleghanies and north of the indeterminate Spanish region which
overspread the present Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California and
Mexico. No boundary lines could be run in those enormous western
expanses; and it made little practical difference whether a given claim
lay a thousand miles this way or that. But on the east it was another
matter. The French pursued their settled policy of conciliating the
Indians wherever they hoped to establish themselves; but though this
was well, it was not enough. Narrow though the English strip of
territory was, the inhabitants greatly outnumbered the French, and were
correspondingly more wealthy. Spotswood of Virginia, in 1710, was for
pushing out beyond the mountains, and Logan of Pennsylvania also called
Walpole's attention to the troubles ahead; but the prime minister would
take no action. On the other hand, the white population of Louisiana
was ridiculously small, and their trade nothing worth mentioning; but
when Anthony Crozar resigned the charter he had received for the
district, it was taken up by the famous John Law, the English
goldsmith's son, who had become chief financial adviser of the Regent
of France; and immediately the face of things underwent a change like
the magic transformations of a pantomime.

The Regent inherited from Louis XIV. a debt which there was not money
enough in all France to pay. Law had a plan to pay it by the issue of
paper. Louisiana offered itself as just the thing for purposes of
investment, and a pretext for the issue of unlimited "shares." Not to
speak of the gold and silver, there was unlimited wealth in the unknown
country, and Law assumed that it could be produced at once. Companies
were formed, and thousands of settlers rushed to the promised paradise.
But we have to do with the Mississippi Bubble only as it affected
America. The Bubble burst, but the settlers remained, and were able to
prosper, in moderation, like other settlers in a fertile country. A
great area of land was occupied. Local tribes of Indians joined in a
massacre of the colonists in 1729. They in turn were nearly
exterminated by the French forces during the next two years, but the
war aroused a new hostility among the red tribes against the French,
which redounded to the English advantage. In 1740, Bienville was more
than willing to make a peace, which left to France no more than nominal
control of the tract of country drained by the southern twelve hundred
miles of the Mississippi. The population, after all the expense and
efforts of half a century, numbered about five thousand white persons,
with upward of two thousand slaves. The horse is his who rides it. The
French had not proved themselves as good horsemen as the English. The
English colonies had at the same time a population of about half a
million; their import and export trade aggregated nearly four million
dollars; they had a wide and profitable trade; and the only thing they
could complain of was the worthless or infamous character of the
majority of the officials which the shameless corruption of the Walpole
administration sent out to govern--in other words, to prey upon--them.
But if this was the only subject of complaint, it could not be termed a
small subject. It meant the enforcement of the Navigation Acts in their
worst form, and the restriction of all manner of manufactures.
Manufactures would tend to make the colonies set up for themselves, and
therefore they must be forbidden:--such was the undisguised argument.
It was a case of the goose laying golden eggs. America had in fact
become so enormously valuable that England wanted it to become profit
and nothing else--and all the profit to be England's. They still failed
to realize that it was inhabited by human beings, and that those human
beings were of English blood. And because the northern colonies, though
the more industrious, produced things which might interfere with
British goods, therefore they were held down more than the southern
colonies, which grew only tobacco, sugar, rice and indigo, which could
in no degree interfere with the sacred shopkeepers and mill-owners of
England. An insanity of blindness and perversity seized upon the
English government, and upon most of the people; they actually were
incapable of seeing justice, or even their own best interests. It seems
strange to us now; but it was a mania, like that of witchcraft, though
it lasted thrice as many years as that did months.

The will of England in respect of the colonies became as despotic as
under the Stuarts; but though it delayed progress, it could not break
down the resistance of the assemblies; and Walpole would consent to no
suggestion looking toward enforcing it by arms. Stamp duties were
spoken of, but not enacted. The governors raged and complained, but the
assemblies held the purse-strings. Would-be tyrants like Shute of
Boston might denounce woe, and Crosby of New York bellow treason, but
they were fain to succumb. Paper money wrought huge mischief, but
nothing could prevent the growing power and wealth of the colonies,
fed, also, by the troubles in Europe. In 1727 the Irish, always friends
of liberty, began to arrive in large numbers. But what was of better
augury than all else was the birth of two men, one in Virginia, the
other in Boston. The latter was named Benjamin Franklin: the former,
George Washington.



CHAPTER ELEVENTH

QUEM JUPITER VULT PERDERE


There are times when, upon nations as upon individuals, there comes a
wave of evil tendency, which seems to them not evil, but good. Under
its influence they do and think things which afterward amaze them in
the retrospect. But such ill seasons are always balanced by the
presence and opposition of those who desire good, whether from selfish
or altruistic motives. And since good alone has a root, connecting it
with the eternal springs of life, therefore in the end it prevails, and
the movement of the race is on the whole, and in the lapse of time,
toward better conditions.

England, during the Eighteenth Century, came under the influence of a
selfish spirit which could not but lead her toward disaster, though at
the time it seemed as if it promoted only prosperity and power. She
thought she could strengthen her own life by restricting the natural
enterprise and development of her colonies: that she could subsist by
sucking human blood. She believed that by compelling the produce of
America to flow toward herself alone, and by making America the sole
recipient of her own manufactures, she must be immeasurably and
continually benefited; not perceiving that the colonies could never
reach the full limit of their productiveness unless freedom were
conceded to all the impulses of their energy, or that the greater the
number of those nations who were allowed freely to supply colonial
wants, the greater those wants would become. Moreover, selfishness is
never consistent, because it does not respect the selfishness of
others; and England, at the same time that she was maintaining her own
trade monopolies, was illicitly undermining the similar monopolies of
other nations. She promoted smuggling in the Spanish West Indies, and
made might right in all her dealings with foreign peoples. The
assiento--the treaty giving her exclusive right to supply the West
Indian islands with African slaves--was actively carried out, and the
slave-trade reached enormous proportions; it is estimated that from
three to nine millions of Africans were imported into the American and
Spanish colonies during the first half of the Eighteenth Century,
yielding a revenue for their importation alone of at least four hundred
million dollars. But the profit did not end there; for their labor on
the plantations in the southern colonies (where alone they could be
used in appreciable numbers) multiplied the production and diminished
the cost of the articles of commerce which those colonies raised. There
were individuals, almost from the beginning, who objected to slavery on
grounds of abstract morality; and others who held that a converted
African should cease to be a slave. But these opinions did not impress
the bulk of the people; and laws were passed classing negroes with
merchandise. "The trade is very beneficial to the country" was the
stereotyped reply to all humanitarian arguments. The cruelties of
transportation in small vessels were regarded as an unavoidable, if
disagreeable, necessity; it was pointed out that the masters of slaves
would be prompted by self-interest to treat them well after they were
landed; and it was obvious that negroes, after a generation of
captivity, were less remote from civilization than when fresh from
Africa.

The good to balance this ill was supplied by the American colonies.
Their resistance to English selfishness may have been in part animated
by selfishness of their own; but it none the less had justice and right
behind it. In any argument on fundamental principles, the colonists
always had the better of it. Their rights as free men and as chartered
communities were indefeasible, were always asserted, and never given
up. They did not hesitate to disregard the more unjust of England's
exactions and restrictions; it was only by such defiance that they
maintained their life. And against the importation of slaves there was
a general feeling, even among the Southern planters; because, not to
speak of other considerations, they multiplied there to an alarming
extent, and the fact that they cheapened production and lowered prices
was manifestly as unwelcome to the planters as it was favorable to
English traders.

But in order to be effective, the protest of a people--their
enlightenment, their virtue and patriotism, their courage and
philosophy, their firmness and self-reliance, their hatred of shams,
dishonesty and tyranny--must be embodied and summed up in certain
individuals among them, who may thus be recognized by the community as
their representatives in the fullest sense, and therefore as their
natural champions and leaders. America has never lacked such men,
adapted to her need; and at this period they were coming to maturity as
Franklin and Washington. They will be with us during the critical hours
of our formative history, and we shall have opportunity to measure
their characters. Meanwhile there is another good man deserving of
passing attention; not born on our soil, but meriting to be called, in
the best sense, an American. In the midst of a corrupt and self-seeking
age, he was unselfish and pure; and while many uttered pretty
sentiments of philanthropy, and devised fanciful Utopias for the
transfiguration of the human race, he went to work with his hands and
purse as well as with his heart and head, and created a home and
happiness for unhappy and unfortunate people in one of the loveliest
and most fertile spots in the western world. If he was not as wise as
Penn, he was as kind; and if his colony did not succeed precisely as he
had planned it should, at any rate it became a happy and prosperous
settlement, which would not have existed but for him. He had not fully
fathomed the truth that in order to bestow upon man the best chance for
earthly felicity, we must, after having provided him with the
environment and the means for it, let him alone to work it out in his
own way. But he had such magnanimity that when he found that his
carefully-arranged and detailed schemes were inefficient, he showed no
resentment, and did not try to enforce what had seemed to him
expedient, against the wishes of his beneficiaries; but retired amiably
and with dignity, and thus merited the purest gratitude that men may
properly accord to a man.

James Edward Oglethorpe was already five years old when the Eighteenth
Century began. He was a Londoner by birth, and had a fortune which he
did not misuse. He was a valiant soldier against the Turks; he was
present with Prince Eugene at the capitulation of Belgrade; and he sat
for more than thirty years in Parliament. He died at the age of ninety;
though there is a portrait of him extant said to have been taken when
he was one hundred and two. If long life be the reward of virtue, he
deserved to survive at least a century.

The speculative fever in England had brought about much poverty; and
debtors were lodged in jail in order, one might suppose, to prevent
them from taking any measures to liquidate their debts. Besides these
unhappy persons, there were many Protestants on the Continent who were
persecuted for their faith's sake. England compassionated these
persons, having learned by experience what persecution is; and did not
offer any objection to a scheme for improving the lot of debtors in her
own land, if any feasible one could be devised.

General Oglethorpe had devised one. He was then, according to our
reckoning, a mature man of about seven-and-thirty; he had visited the
prisons, and convinced himself that there was neither political economy
nor humanity in this method of preserving the impecunious class. Why
not take them to America? Why not found a new colony there where men
might dwell in peace and comfort, with the aim not of amassing wealth,
but of living sober and useful lives? On the southern side of South
Carolina there was a region fitted for such an enterprise, which, owing
to its proximity to the Spanish colony at St. Augustine, had been vexed
by border quarrels; but Oglethorpe, with his military experience, would
be able to keep the Spaniards in their place with one hand, while he
was planting gardens for his proteges with the other. Thus his colony
would be useful on grounds of high policy, as well as for its own ends.
And in order additionally to conciliate the good will of the home
government, controlled as it was by mercantile interests chiefly, the
silk-worm should be cultivated there, and England thus saved the duties
on the Italian fabrics. Should there be slaves in the new Eden?--On all
accounts, No: first because slavery was intrinsically wrong, and
secondly because it would lead to idleness, if not to wealth, among the
colonists. For the same reason, land could only pass to the eldest son,
or failing male issue, back to the state; if permission were given to
divide it, or to sell it, there would soon be great landed properties
and an aristocracy. Nor should the importation of rum be permitted, for
if men have rum, they are prone to drink it, and drunkenness was
incompatible with the kind of existence which the good General wished
his colonists to lead. In a word, by removing temptations to vice and
avarice, he thought he could make his people forget that such evils had
ever belonged to human nature. But experiments founded upon the innate
impeccability of man have furnished many comedies and not a few
tragedies since the world began.

The Oglethorpe idea, however, appealed to the public, and became a sort
of fashionable fad. It was commended, and after Parliament had voted
ten thousand pounds toward it, it was everywhere accepted as the
correct thing. The charter was given in June, 1732, and a suitable
design was not wanting for the corporation seal--silkworms, with the
motto, Non Sibi, sed Aliis. This might refer either to the colonists or
to the patrons, since the latter were to receive no emoluments for
their services, and the former were to work for the sake, in part at
least, of vindicating the nobility of labor. It is true that the
silkworm is an involuntary and unconscious altruist; but we must allow
some latitude in symbols; and besides, all executive and legislative
power was given to the trustees, or such council as they might choose
to appoint.

In November the general conducted his hundred or more human derelicts
to Port Royal, and, going up the stream, chose the site for his city of
Savannah, and laid it out in liberal parallelograms. While it was
building he tented beneath a quartette of primeval pines, and exchanged
friendly greetings and promises with the various Indian tribes who sent
deputies to him. A year from that time, the German Protestant refugees
began to arrive, and started a town of their own further inland. A
party of Moravians followed; and the two Wesleys aided to introduce an
exalted religious sentiment which might have recalled the days of the
Pilgrims. For the present, all went harmoniously; the debtors were
thankful to be out of prison; the religious folk were happy so long as
they might wreak themselves on their religion; and the silk-culture
paid a revenue so long as England paid bounties on it. But the time
must come when the colonists would demand to do what they liked with
their own land, and other things; when they would import rum by stealth
and hardly blush to be found out; when some of the less
democratically-minded decided that there were advantages in slaves
after all; and when some of the more independent declared they could
not endure oppression, and migrated to other colonies. After struggling
a score of years against the inevitable, the trustees surrendered their
trusteeship, and the colony came under the management of the Second
George. Oglethorpe had long ere this retired to England, after having
kept his promise of reducing the Spaniards to order; and at his home at
Cranham Hall in Essex he continued to be the friend of man until after
the close of the American Revolution.

The war with Spain, of which Oglethorpe's unsuccessful attack upon St.
Augustine and triumphant defense of his own place was but a very minor
feature, raged for a while in the West Indies with no very marked
advantage to either contestant, and then drew the other nations of
Europe into the fray. Nothing creditable was being fought for on either
side. England, to be sure, had declared war with the object of
expunging Spain from America; but it had been only in order that she
herself might replace Spain there as a monopolist. France came in to
prevent England from enjoying this monopoly. The death of the Austrian
king and a consequent dispute as to the succession added that power to
the melee. Russia received an invitation to join, and this finally led
to the Peace of Aix La Chapelle in 1748, which replaced all things in
dispute just where they were before innumerable lives and enormous
treasure had been expended. But the Eighteenth was a fighting Century,
for it was the transition period from the old to the new order of
civilized life.

The part borne by the American colonies in this struggle was quite
subordinate and sympathetic; but it was not the less interesting to the
Americans. In 1744 the Six Nations (as the Five had been called since
the accession of the Tuscaroras) made a treaty of alliance with the
English whereby the Ohio valley was secured to the latter as against
the French--so far, that is, as the Indians could secure it. But the
Pennsylvanians understood that more than Indian treaties would be
needed against France, and as their country was likely to be among the
first involved, they determined to raise money and men for the
campaign. There were, of course, men in Pennsylvania who were not of
the Quaker way of thinking; but even the Quakers forbore to oppose the
measure, and many of them gave it explicit approval. The incident gains
its chief interest however from the fact that the man most active and
efficient in getting both the funds and the soldiers was Benjamin
Franklin, the Boston boy, in whose veins flowed the blood of both
Quaker and Calvinist, but who was himself of far too original a
character to be either. He was at this epoch just past forty, and had
been a resident of Philadelphia for some twenty years, and a famous
printer, writer, and man of mark. He hit upon the scheme--which, like
so many of his, was more practical than orthodox--of persuading dollars
out of men's pockets by means of a lottery. He knew that, whatever a
fastidious morality might protest, lotteries are friendly to human
nature; and if there be any part of human nature with which Franklin
was unacquainted, it has not yet been announced. Having got the money,
his next care was for the men; and his plans resulted in assembling an
organized force of ten or twelve thousand militiamen. But the energy
and ingenuity of this incomparable Franklin of ours could be equaled
only by his modesty; he would not accept a colonelcy, but shouldered
his musket along with the rank and file; and doubtless the company to
which he belonged forgot the labors of war in their enjoyment of his
wit, humor, anecdotes, parables, and resources of all kinds.

After so much waste and folly as had marked the conduct of the war in
Europe, it is good to hear the tale of the capture of Louisburg. It was
an adventure which gave the colonists merited confidence in themselves,
and the character of the little army, and the management of the
campaign, were an excellent and suggestive dress rehearsal of the great
drama of thirty years later. The army was a combination of Yankees with
arms in their hands to effect an object eminently conducive to the
common welfare. For Louisburg was the key to the St. Lawrence, it
commanded the fisheries, and it threatened Acadia, or rather Nova
Scotia, which was inhabited chiefly by Bretons, liable to afford succor
to their belligerent brethren. The fort had been built, after the close
of the former war, by those who had preferred not to live under the
government of the House of Hanover, on the eastern extremity of the
island called Cape Breton, itself lying northeast of the Nova Scotian
promontory. The site was good for defense, and the fortifications,
scientifically designed, were held to be impregnable. Had Louisburg
rested content with being strong, it might have been allowed to remain
at peace; but at the beginning of the war, and before the frontier
people in Nova Scotia had heard of it, a French party swooped down from
Louisburg on the settlement at Canso (the gut between Cape Breton and
Nova Scotia), destroyed all that was destructible, and carried eighty
men as prisoners of war to their stronghold. After keeping them there
during the summer, these men were paroled and went to Boston. This was
a mistake on the Louisburgers' part; for the men had made themselves
well acquainted with the fortifications and the topography of the
neighborhood, and placed this useful information at the disposal of
William Shirley, a lawyer of ability, who was afterward governor of the
colony, and a warrior of some note. It was Shirley's opinion that
Louisburg must be taken, and the idea immediately became popular. It
was the main topic of discussion in Boston, and all over New England,
during the autumn and winter; Massachusetts decided that it could be
done, and that she could do it, though the help of other colonies would
be gladly accepted. Yet the feeling was not unanimous, if the vote of
the legislature be a criterion; the bill passed there by a majority of
one. Be that as it may, once resolved upon, the enterprise was pushed
with ardor, not unmingled with prayer--the old Puritan leaven
reappearing as soon as deeds of real moment were in the wind. In every
village and hamlet there was excitement and preparation--the warm
courage of men glad to have a chance at the hated fortress, and the
pale bravery of women keeping down the heavy throbbing of their hearts
so that their sons and husbands might feel no weakness for their sakes.
The fishermen of Marblehead, used to face the storms and fogs of the
Newfoundland Banks; the farmers and mechanics, who could hit a Bay
shilling (if one could be found in that era of paper money) at fifty
paces; and the hunters, who knew the craft of the Indians and were
inured to every fatigue and hardship--finer material for an army was
never got together before: independent, bold, cunning, handy,
inventive, full of resource; but utterly ignorant of drill, and
indifferent to it. Their officers were chosen by themselves, of the
same rank and character as they; their only uniforms were their
flintlocks and hangers. They marched and camped as nature prompted, but
they had common-sense developed to the utmost by the exigencies of
their daily lives, and they created, simply by being together, a
discipline and tactics of their own; they even learned enough of the
arts of fortification and intrenchment, during the siege, to serve all
their requirements. They had the American instinct to break loose from
tradition and solve problems from an original point of view; they
laughed at the jargon and technicalities of conventional war, but they
had their own passwords, and they understood one another in and out.
The carpenters and other mechanics among them carried their skill
along, and were ever ready to put it in practice for the general
behoof. Most of them left wives and children at home; but "Suffer no
anxious thoughts to rest in your mind about me," writes his wife to
Seth Pomeroy, who had sent word to her that he was "willing to stay
till God's time comes to deliver the city into our hands":--"I leave
you in the hands of God," added she; and subjoined, by way of village
gossip, that "the whole town is much engaged with concern for the
expedition, how Providence will order the affair, for which religious
meetings every week are maintained." We can imagine those meetings,
held in the village meeting-house, with an infirm old veteran of King
William's War to lead in prayer, and the benches occupied by the women,
devout but spirited, with the little children by their sides. What
hearty prayers: what sighs irrepressibly heaving those brave, tender
bosoms; what secret tears, denied by smiles when the face was lifted
from the clasping hands! Righteous prayers, which were fulfilled.

Over three thousand men went from Massachusetts alone; New Hampshire
added five hundred, and more than that number arrived from Connecticut,
after the rest had gone into camp at Canso. The three hundred from
little Rhode Island came too late. Other colonies sent rations and
money. But the four thousand were enough, with Pepperel of Kittery for
commander, and a good cause. They set out alone while the Cape Breton
ice still filled the harbors; for Commodore Warren of the English fleet
at Antigua would not go except by order from England--which, however,
came soon afterward, so that he and his ships joined them after all
before hostilities began. The expedition first set eyes on their
objective point on the day before May day, 1745.

The fortress bristled with guns of all sizes, and the walls were of
enormous thickness, so that no cannon belonging to the besiegers could
hope to make a breach in them. But the hearts of the garrison were less
stout than their defenses; and when four hundred cheering volunteers
approached a battery on shore, the Frenchmen spiked their guns and ran
away.

The siege lasted six weeks, with unusually fine weather. In the
intervals of attacks upon the island battery, which resisted them, the
men hunted, fished, played rough outdoor games, and kept up their
spirits; and they pounded Louisburg gates with their guns; but no
advantage was gained; and a night-attack, in the Indian style, was
discovered prematurely, and nearly two hundred men were killed or
captured. Finally, there seemed to be nothing for it but to escalade
the walls, Warren--who had done nothing thus far except prevent relief
from approaching by sea--bombarding the city meanwhile. It hardly seems
possible the attempt could have succeeded; at best, the losses would
have been enormous. But at the critical moment, depressed, perhaps, by
having witnessed the taking of an incautious French frigate which had
tried to run the blockade, what should the French commander do but hang
out a white flag! Yes, the place had capitulated! The gates that could
not be hammered in with cannon-balls were thrown open, and in crowded
the Yankee army, laughing, staring, and thanking the Lord of Hosts for
His mercies. Truly, it was like David overcoming Goliath, without his
sling. It was a great day for New England; and on the same day thirty
years later the British redcoats fell beneath the volleys on Bunker
Hill.

The French tried to recapture the place next year, but storms,
pestilence and other disasters prevented; and the only other notable
incident of the war was the affair of Commander Knowles at Boston in
1747. He was anchored off Nantasket with a squadron, when some of his
tars deserted, as was not surprising, considering the sort of commander
he was, and the charms of the famous town. Knowles, ignorant of the
spirit of a Boston mob, impressed a number of wharfmen and seamen from
vessels in the harbor; he had done the same thing before in England,
and why not here? But the mob was on fire at once, and after the timid
governor had declined to seize such of the British naval officers as
were in the town, the crowd, terrible in its anger, came thundering
down King Street and played the sheriff for itself. The hair of His
Majesty's haughty commanders and lieutenants must have crisped under
their wigs when they looked out of the windows of the coffee-house and
saw them. In walks the citizens' deputation, with scant ceremony:
protests are unavailing: off to jail His Majesty's officers must
straightway march, leaving their bottles of wine half emptied, and
their chairs upset on the sawdusted floor; and in jail must they abide,
until those impressed Bostonians have been liberated. It was a
wholesome lesson; and among the children who ran and shouted beside the
procession to the prison were those who, when they were men grown,
threw the tea into Boston Harbor.

In 1748 the Peace was made, and the Duke of Newcastle, a flighty,
trivial and faithless creature, gave place to the strict, honest, and
narrow Duke of Bedford as Secretary of the Colonies. The colonies had
been under the charge of the Board of Commissioners, who could issue
what orders they chose, but had no power to enforce them; and as the
colonial assemblies slighted their commands except when it pleased them
to do otherwise, much exasperation ensued on the Commissioners' part.
The difficulties would have been minimized had it not been the habit of
Newcastle to send out as colonial officials the offscourings of the
British aristocracy: and when a British aristocrat is worthless,
nothing can be more worthless than he. The upshot of the situation was
that the colonists did what they pleased, regardless of orders from
home; while yet the promulgation of those orders, aiming to defend
injustices and iniquities, kept up a chronic and growing disaffection
toward England. So it had been under Newcastle, who had uniformly
avoided personal annoyance by omitting to read the constant complaints
of the Commissioners; but Bedford was a man of another stamp, fond of
business, granite in his decisions, and resolved to be master in his
department. It was easy to surmise that his appointment would hasten
the drift of things toward a crisis. England would not tamely
relinquish her claim to absolute jurisdiction over her colonies. But
the bulwarks of popular liberty were rising in America, and every year
saw them strengthened and more ably manned. English legislative
opposition only defined and solidified the colonial resistance. What
was to be the result? There would be no lack of English statesmen
competent to consider it; men like Pitt, Murray and Townshend were
already above the horizon of history. But it was not by statesmanship
that the issue was to be decided. Man is proud of his intellect; but it
is generally observable that it is the armed hand that settles the
political problems of the world.

There were in the colonies men of ability, and of consideration, who
were traitors to the cause of freedom. Such were Thomas Hutchinson, a
plausible hypocrite, not devoid of good qualities, but intent upon
filling his pockets from the public purse; Oliver, a man of less
ability but equal avarice; and William Shirley, the scheming lawyer
from England, who had made America his home in order to squeeze a
living out of it. These men went to England to promote the passage of a
law insuring a regular revenue for the civil list from the colonists,
independent of the latter's approval; the immediate pretext being that
money was needed to protect the colonies against French encroachments.
The several assemblies refused to consent to such a tax; and the
question was then raised whether Parliament had not the right to
override the colonists' will. Lord Halifax, the First Commissioner, was
urgent in favor of the proposition; he was an ignorant, arbitrary man,
who laid out a plan for the subjugation of the colonies as lightly and
willfully as he might have directed the ditch-digging and
fence-building on his estates. Murray, afterward Lord Mansfield, held
that Parliament had the requisite power; but in the face of the united
protest of the colonies, that body laid the measure aside for the
present. Meanwhile the conditions of future trouble were preparing in
the Ohio Valley, where French and English were making conflicting
claims and planting rival stations; and in Nova Scotia, where the town
of Halifax was founded in an uninviting fir forest, and the project was
mooted of transporting the French Acadians to some place or places
where they would cease to constitute a peril by serving as a stage for
French machinations against the English rule.

Another and final war with France was already appearing inevitable; the
colonists must bear a hand in it, but they also were at odds with
England herself on questions vital to their prosperity and happiness.
In the welter of events of the next few years we find a mingling of
conditions deliberately created (with a view, on England's part, of
checking the independent tendencies of the Americans and of forcing
tribute from them) and of unforeseen occurrences due to fortuitous
causes beyond the calculation and control of persons in power. Finally,
the declaration of war against France in 1756--though it had
unofficially existed at least two years before--and its able management
by the great Pitt, enabled England to dictate a peace in 1763 giving
her all she asked for in Europe and the East, and the whole of the
French possessions in America, besides islands in the West Indies. Her
triumph was great; but she did not foresee (though a few acute
observers did) that this great conquest would within a few years fall
into the hands of the colonists, making them potentially the greatest
of nations. At the era of the Revolution, the white inhabitants in the
colonies numbered about two millions, and the black about half a
million.

In 1754, the French had upward of sixty posts west of the Alleghanies,
and were sending expeditions to drive out whatever Englishmen could be
found. The Indian tribes who believed themselves to own the land were
aroused, and appealed to the Americans to assist them; which the latter
were willing to do, though not for the Indians' sake. Virginia was
especially concerned, because she claimed beyond the western mountains,
and had definite designs in that direction. In order to find out just
what the disposition of the French might be, Robert Dinwiddie, a Scot,
governor of Virginia, selected a trustworthy envoy to proceed to the
French commanders in the disputed districts and ask their purposes. His
choice fell upon George Washington, a young man of blameless character,
steady, courageous and observant, wise in judgment and of mature mind,
though he was but one and twenty years of age. He was the son of a
Virginia planter, had had such schooling as his neighborhood afforded
until he was sixteen, and had then begun life as a surveyor--a good
calling in a country whose inhabitants were daily increasing and whose
lands were practically limitless. Life in the open air, and the custom
of the woods and hills, had developed a frame originally powerful into
that of a tall and hardened athlete, able to run, wrestle, swim, leap,
ride, as well as to use the musket and the sword. His intellect was not
brilliant, but it was clear, and his habit of thought methodical; he
was of great modesty, yet one of those who rise to the emergency, and
are kindled into greater and greater power by responsibilities or
difficulties which would overwhelm feebler or less constant natures.
None would have been less likely than Washington himself to foretell
his own greatness; but when others believed in him he was compelled by
his religious and conscientious nature to act up to their belief. The
marvelous selflessness of the man, while it concealed from him what he
was, immeasurably increased his power to act; to do his duty was all
that he ever proposed to himself, and therefore he was able to
concentrate his every faculty on that alone. The lessons of experience
were never thrown away upon him, and his faith in an overruling
Providence rendered him calm at all times, except on the rare occasions
when some subordinate's incompetence or negligence at a critical moment
caused to burst forth in him that terrific wrath which was more
appalling to its object than the guns of a battery. There was always
great personal dignity in Washington, insomuch that nothing like
comradeship, in the familiar sense, was ever possible to any one with
him; he was totally devoid of the sense of humor, and was therefore
debarred from one whole region of human sympathies which Franklin loved
to dwell in. It is one of the marvels of history that a man with a mind
of such moderate compass as Washington's should have gained the
reputation, which he amply deserved, of being the foremost American of
his age, and one of the leading figures in human annals. But, in truth,
we attach far too much weight to intellect in our estimates of human
worth. Washington, was competent for the work that was given him to do,
and that work was one of the most important that ever fell to the lot
of a man. Faith, firmness, integrity, grasp, simplicity, and the
exceptional physical endowment which enabled him to support the
tremendous fatigues and trials of his campaigns, and of the opposition
he encountered from selfish and shortsighted politicians in
Congress--these qualities were almost sufficient to account for
Washington. Almost, but perhaps not quite; there must have been in
addition an inestimable personal equation which fused all into a
harmonious individuality that isolates him in our regard: a wholeness,
which can be felt, but which is hardly to be set down in phrases.

Washington's instructions required him to proceed to Venango and
Waterford, a distance of more than four hundred miles, through forests
and over mountains, with rivers to cross and hostile Indians to beware
of; and it was the middle of November when he set out, with the most
inclement season of the year before him. Kit Gist, a hunter and trapper
of the Natty Bumppo order, was his guide; they laid their course
through the dense but naked forests as a mariner over a sullen sea.
Four or five attendants, including an interpreter, made up the party.
Day after day they rode, sleeping at night round a fire, with the snow
or the freezing rain falling on their blankets, and the immense silence
of the winter woods around them. On the 23d of the month they came to
the point of junction between two great rivers--the Monongahela and the
Alleghany. A wild and solitary spot it was, hardly visited till then by
white men; the land on the fork was level and broad, with mighty trees
thronging upon it; opposite were steep bluffs. The Alleghany hurried
downward at the rate a man would walk; the Monongahela loitered, deep
and glassy. Washington had acted as adjutant of a body of Virginia
troops for the past two or three years, and he examined the place with
the eyes of a soldier as well as of a surveyor. It seemed to him that a
fort and a town could be well placed there; but in the pure frosty air
of that ancient forest, untenanted save by wild beasts, there was no
foreshadowing of the grimy smoke and roar, the flaring smelting-works,
the crowded and eager population of the Pittsburgh that was to be.
Having fixed the scene in his memory, Washington rode his horse down
the river bank, and plunging into the icy current, swam across. On the
northwest shore a fire was built, where the party dried their garments,
and slept the sleep of frontiersmen.

Conducted now by the Delawares, they crossed low-lying, fertile lands
to Logstown, where they got news of a junction between French troops
from Louisiana and from Erie. Arriving in due season at Venango,
Washington found the French officer in command there very positive that
the Ohio was theirs, and that they would keep it; they admitted that
the English outnumbered them; but "they are too dilatory," said the
Frenchman, staring up with an affectation of superciliousness at the
tall, blue-eyed young Virginian. The latter thanked the testy Gaul,
with his customary grave courtesy, and continued his journey to Fort Le
Boeuf. It was a structure characteristic of the place and period; a
rude but effective redoubt of logs and clay, with the muzzles of cannon
pouting from the embrasures, and more than two hundred boats and canoes
for the trip down the river. "I shall seize every Englishman in the
valley," was the polite assurance of the commander; but, being a man of
pith himself, he knew another when he saw him, and offered Washington
the hospitalities of the post. But the serious young soldier had no
taste for hobnobbing, and returned at once to Venango, where he found
his horses unavailable, and continued southward on foot, meeting bad
weather and deep snow. He borrowed a deerskin shirt and leggins from
the tallest of the Indians, dismissed his attendants, left the Indian
trail, and struck out for the Forks by compass, with Gist as his
companion. A misguided red man, hoping for glory from the white chief's
scalp, prepared an ambush, and as Washington passed within a few paces,
pulled the trigger on him. He did not know that the destiny of half the
world hung upon his aim; but indeed the bullet was never molded that
could draw blood from Washington. The red man missed; and the next
moment Gist had him helpless, with a knife at his throat. But no: the
man who could pour out the lives of his country's enemies, and of his
own soldiers, without stint, when duty demanded it, and could hang a
gallant and gently nurtured youth as a spy, was averse from bloodshed
when only his insignificant self was concerned. Gist must sulkily put
up his knife, and the would-be assassin was suffered to depart in
peace. But in order to avoid the possible consequences of this
magnanimity, the envoy and his companion traveled without pausing for
more than sixty miles. And then, here was the Alleghany to cross again,
and no horse to help one. Swimming was out of the question, even for
the iron Washington, for the river was hurtling with jagged cakes of
ice.

A day's hacking with a little hatchet cut down trees enough--not apple
trees--to make a raft, on which they adventured; but in mid-stream
Washington's pole upset him, and he was fain to get ashore on an
island. There must they pass the night; and so cold was it, that the
next morning they were able to reach the mainland dry shod, on the ice.
What was crossing the Delaware (almost exactly twenty-three years
afterward) compared to this? Washington was destined to do much of his
work amid snow and ice; but for aught anybody could say, the poles or
the equator were all one to him.

In consequence of his report a fort was begun on the site of
Pittsburgh, and he was appointed lieutenant-colonel to take charge of
it, with a hundred and fifty men, and orders to destroy whomsoever
presumed to stay him. Two hundred square miles of fertile Ohio lands
were to be their reward. An invitation to other colonies to join in the
assertion of English ownership met with scanty response, or none at
all. The idea of a union was in the air, but it was complicated with
that old bugbear of a regular revenue to be exacted by act of
Parliament, which Shirley and the others still continued to press with
hungry zeal; while the assemblies were not less set upon making all
grants annual, with specifications as to person and object. While the
matter hung in the wind, the Virginians were exposed to superior
forces; but in the spring of 1754 Washington, with forty men, surprised
a party under Jumonville, defeated them, killed Jumonville, and took
the survivors prisoners. Washington was exposed to the thickest showers
of the bullets; they whistled to him familiarly, and "believe me," he
assured a correspondent, "there is something charming in the sound."
His life was to be sweetened by a great deal of that kind of charm.

But the French were gathering like hornets, and the Lieutenant-colonel
must needs take refuge in a stockaded post named Fort Necessity, where
his small force was besieged by seven hundred French and Indians who,
in a nine hours' attack, killed thirty of his men, but used up most of
their own ammunition. A parley resulted in Washington's marching out
with all his survivors and their baggage and retiring from the Ohio
valley. The war was begun; and it is worth noting that Washington's
command to "Fire!" on Jumonville's party was the word that began it.
But still the other colonists held off. The Six Nations began to
murmur: "The French are men," said they; "you are like women." In June,
1754, a convocation or congress of deputies from all colonies north of
the Potomac came together at Albany. Franklin was among them, with the
draught of a plan of union in his ample pocket, and dauntless and deep
thoughts in his broad mind. He was always far in advance of his time;
one of the most "modern" men of that century; but he had the final
excellence of wisdom which consists in never forcing his contemporaries
to bite off more than there was reasonable prospect of their being able
to chew. He lifted them gently up step after step of the ascent toward
the stars.

Philadelphia is a central spot (this was the gist of his proposal), so
let it be the seat of our federal government. Let us have a triennial
grand council to originate bills, allowing King George to appoint the
governor-general who may have a negative voice, and who shall choose
the military officers, as against the civil appointees of the council.
All war measures, external land purchases and organization, general
laws and taxes should be the province of the federal government, but
each colony should keep its private constitution, and money should
issue only by common consent. Once a year should the council meet, to
sit not more than six weeks, under a speaker of their own choosing.--In
the debate, the scheme was closely criticised, but the suave wielder of
the lightning gently disarmed all opponents, and won a substantial
victory--"not altogether to my mind"; but he insisted upon no counsel
of perfection. England, and some of the colonies themselves, were
somewhat uneasy after thinking it over; mutual sympathy is not created
by reason. England doubted on other grounds; a united country might be
more easy to govern than thirteen who each demanded special treatment;
but then, what if the federation decline to be governed at all?
Meanwhile, there was the federation; and Franklin, looking westward,
foresaw the Nineteenth Century.

[Illustration: Death of General Braddock]

Doubtless, however, outside pressure would be necessary to re-enforce
the somewhat lukewarm sentiment among the colonies in favor of union. A
review of their several conditions at this time would show general
prosperity and enjoyment of liberty, but great unlikenesses in manners
and customs and private prejudices. Virginia, most important of the
southern group, showed the apparent contradiction of a people with
republican ideas living after the style of aristocrats; breeding great
gentlemen like Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Patrick Henry, who
were to be leaders in the work of founding and defending the first
great democracy of the world. Maryland was a picturesque principality
under the rule of a dissolute young prince, who enjoyed a great private
revenue from his possessions, and yet interfered but little with the
individual freedom of his subjects. Pennsylvania was administering
itself on a basis of sheer civic equality, and was absorbing from
Franklin the principles of liberal thought and education. New York was
so largely tinged with Dutchmanship that it resented more than the
others the authority of alien England, and fought its royal governors
to the finish. New England was an aggregation of independent towns,
each a little democracy, full of religious and educational vigor. In
Delaware, John Woolman the tailor was denouncing slavery with all the
zeal and arguments of the Garrisons of a century later. These were
incongruous elements to be bound into a fagot; but there was a policy
being consolidated in England which would presently give them good
reason for standing together to secure rights which were more precious
than private pet traditions and peculiarities. Newcastle became head of
the English government; he appointed the absurd Duke of Cumberland,
captain-general of the English army, to the direction of American
military affairs; and he picked out an obstinate, ruffianly, stupid
martinet of a Perthshire Scotchman, sixty years old and of ruined
fortunes, to lead the English forces against the French in America.
Braddock went over armed with the new and despotic mutiny bill, and
with directions to divest all colonial army officers of their rank
while in his service. He was also to exact a revenue by royal
prerogative, and the governors were to collect a fund to be expended
for colonial military operations. This was Newcastle's notion of what
was suitable for the occasion. In the meantime Shirley, persistently
malevolent, advocated parliamentary taxation of the colonies and a
congress of royal governors; and to the arguments of Franklin against
the plan, suggested colonial representation in Parliament: which
Franklin disapproved unless all colonial disabilities be removed, and
they become in all political respects an integral portion of England.
During the discussion, the colonies themselves were resisting the royal
prerogative with embarrassing unanimity. Braddock, on landing and
finding no money ready, was exceeding wroth; but the helpless governors
told him that nothing short of an act of Parliament would suffice;
possibly not even that. Taxation was the one cry of every royal
office-holder in America. What sort of a tax should it be?--Well, a
stamp-tax seemed the easiest method: a stamp, like a mosquito, sucks
but little blood at a time, but mosquitoes in the aggregate draw a
great deal. But the stamp act was to be delayed eleven years more, and
then its authors were to receive an unpleasant surprise.

There was a strong profession of reluctance on both the French and
English side to come formally to blows; both sent large bodies of
troops to the Ohio valley, "but only for defense." Braddock was ready
to advance in April, if only he had "horses and carriages"; which by
Franklin's exertions were supplied. The bits of dialogue and comment in
which this grizzled nincompoop was an interlocutor, or of which he was
the theme, are as amusing as a page from a comedy of Shakespeare.
Braddock has been called brave; but the term is inappropriate; he could
fly into a rage when his brutal or tyrannical instincts were questioned
or thwarted, and become insensible, for a time, even to physical
danger. Ignorance, folly and self-conceit not seldom make a man seem
fearless who is a poltroon at heart. Braddock's death was a better one
than he deserved; he raged about the field like a dazed bull; fly he
could not; he was incapable of adopting any intelligent measures to
save his troops; on the contrary he kept reiterating conventional
orders in a manner that showed his wits were gone. The bullet that
dropped him did him good service; but his honor was so little sensitive
that he felt no gratitude at being thus saved the consequences of one
of the most disgraceful and willfully incurred defeats that ever befell
an English general. The English troops upon whom, according to
Braddock, "it was impossible that the savages should make any
impression," huddled together, and shot down their own officers in
their blundering volleys. In the narrow wood path they could not see
the enemy, who fired from behind trees at their leisure. Half of the
men, and sixty-three out of the eighty-six officers, were killed or
wounded. In that hell of explosions, smoke, yells and carnage,
Washington was clear-headed and alert, and passed to and fro amid the
rain of bullets as if his body were no more mortal than his soul. The
contingent of Virginia troops--the "raw American militia," as Braddock
had called them, "who have little courage or good will, from whom I
expect almost no military service, though I have employed the best
officers to drill them":--these men did almost the only fighting that
was done on the English side, but they were too few to avert the
disaster.

The expedition had set out from Turtle Creek on the Monongahela on the
ninth of July--twelve hundred men. The objective point was Fort
Duquesne, "which can hardly detain me above three or four days,"
remarked the dull curmudgeon. No scouts were thrown out: they walked
straight into the ambuscade which some two hundred French and six
hundred Indians had prepared for them. The slaughter lasted two hours;
there was no maneuvering. Thirty men of the three Virginia companies
were left alive; they stood their ground to the last, while the British
regulars "ran as sheep before hounds," leaving everything to the enemy.
Washington did whatever was possible to prevent the retreat from
becoming a blind panic. When the rout reached the camp, Dunbar, the
officer in charge there, destroyed everything, to the value of half a
million dollars, and ran with the rest. Reviewing the affair, Franklin
remarks with a demure arching of the eyebrow that it "gave us Americans
the first suspicion that our exalted ideas of the prowess of British
regular troops had not been well founded."

It was indeed an awakening for the colonists. For all their bold
resistance to oppression, they had never ceased to believe that an
English soldier was the supreme and final expression of trained and
disciplined force; and now, before their almost incredulous eyes, the
flower of the British army had been beaten, and the bloody remnant
stampeded into a shameful flight by a few hundred painted savages and
Frenchmen. They all had been watching Braddock's march; and they never
forgot the lesson of his defeat. From that time, the British regular
was to them only a "lobster-back," more likely, when it came to equal
conflict with themselves, to run away than to stand his ground.

Instead of throwing themselves into the arms of France, however, the
colonists loyally addressed themselves to helping King George out of
his scrape; and though they would not let him tax them, they hesitated
not to tax themselves.

Pennsylvania raised fifty thousand pounds, and Massachusetts sent near
eight thousand men to aid in driving the French from the northern
border. Acadia's time had come. Though the descendants of the Breton
peasants, who dated their settlement from 1604, had since the Peace of
Utrecht nominally belonged to England, yet their sentiments and mode of
life had been unaltered; Port Royal had been little changed by calling
it Annapolis, and the simple, old-fashioned Catholics loved their homes
with all the tenacity of six unbroken generations. Their feet were
familiar in the paths of a hundred and fifty quiet and industrious
years; their houses nestled in their lowly places like natural features
of the landscape; their fields and herds and the graves of their
forefathers sweetened and consecrated the land. They were a chaste,
industrious, homely, pious, but not an intellectual people; and to such
the instinct of home is far stronger than in more highly cultivated
races. They had prospered in their modest degree, and multiplied; so
that now they numbered sixteen thousand men, women and children. During
the past few years, however, they had been subjected to the
unrestrained brutality of English administration in its worst form;
they had no redress at law, their property could be taken from them
without payment or recourse; if they did not keep their tyrant's fires
burning, "the soldiers shall absolutely take their houses for fuel."
Estate-titles, records, all that could identify and guarantee their
ownership in the means and conditions of livelihood, were taken; even
their boats and their antiquated firearms were sequestrated. And orders
were actually given to the soldiers to punish any misbehavior summarily
upon the first Acadian who came to hand, whether or not he were guilty
of, or aware of, the offense, and with absolutely no concern for the
formality of arrest or trial. In all the annals of Spanish brutality,
there is nothing more disgraceful to humanity than the systematic and
enjoined treatment of these innocent Bretons by the English, even
before the consummating outrage which made the whole civilized world
stare in indignant amazement.

It is a matter for keen regret that men born on our soil should have
been even involuntarily associated with this episode. The design was
kept a secret from all until the last moment; but one could wish that
some American had then committed an act of insubordination, though at
the cost of his life, by way of indicating the detestation which all
civilized and humane minds must feel for such an act. The colonists
knew the value of liberty; they had made sacrifices for it; they had
felt the shadow of oppression; and they might see, in the treatment of
the Acadians, what would have been their fate had they yielded to the
despotic instincts of England. The best and the worst that can be said
of them is that they obeyed orders, and looked on while the iniquity
was being perpetrated.

The force of provincials and regulars landed without molestation, and
captured the feeble forts with the loss of but twenty killed. The
Acadians agreed to take the oath of fidelity, but stipulated not to be
forced to bear arms against their own countrymen. General Charles
Lawrence, the lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, replied to their plea
that they be allowed to have their boats and guns, that it was "highly
arrogant, insidious and insulting"; and Halifax, another of the
companions in infamy, added that they wanted their boats for "carrying
provisions to the enemy"--there being no enemy nearer than Quebec. As
for the guns, "All Roman Catholics are restrained from having arms, and
are subject to penalties if arms are found in their houses."--"Not the
want of arms, but our consciences, would engage us not to revolt,"
pleaded the unhappy men.--"What excuse can you make," bellows Halifax,
"for treating this government with such indignity as to expound to them
the nature of fidelity?" The Acadians agreed to take the oath
unconditionally: "By British statute," they were thereupon informed,
"having once refused, you cannot after take the oath, but are popish
recusants." Chief-justice Belcher, a third of these British moguls,
declared they obstructed the progress of the settlement, and that all
of them should be deported from the province. Proclamation was then
made, ordering them to assemble at their respective posts; and in the
morning they obeyed, leaving their homes, to which, though they knew it
not, they were never to return. "Your lands and tenements, cattle of
all kinds, and livestock of all sorts, are forfeited to the crown,"
they were told, "and you yourselves are to be removed from this
province." They were kept prisoners, without food, till the ships
should be ready. Not only were they torn from their homes, but families
were separated, sons from their mothers, husbands from their wives,
daughters from their parents, and, as Longfellow has pictured to us,
lovers from one another. Those who tried to escape were hunted by the
soldiers like wild beasts, and "if they can find a pretext to kill
them, they will," said a British officer. They were scattered,
helpless, friendless and destitute, all up and down the Atlantic coast,
and their villages were laid waste. Lord Loudoun, British
commander-in-chief in America, on receiving a petition from some of
them written in French, was so enraged not only at their petitioning,
but that they should presume to do so in their own language, that he
had five of their leading men arrested, consigned to England, and sent
as common seamen on English men-of-war. No detail was wanting, from
first to last, to make the crime of the Acadian deportation perfect;
and only an Irishman, Edmund Burke, lifted his voice to say that the
deed was inhuman, and done "upon pretenses that, in the eye of an
honest man, are not worth a farthing." But Burke was not in Parliament
until eleven years after the Acadians were scattered.

The incident, from an external point of view, does not belong to the
history of the United States. Yet is it pertinent thereto, as showing
of what enormities the English of that age were capable. Their entire
conduct during this French war was dishonorable, and often atrocious.
Forgetting the facts of history, we often smile at the grumblings of
the Continental nations anent "Perfidious Albion" and "British gold."
But the acts committed by the English government during these years
fully justify every charge of corruption, treachery and political
profligacy that has ever been brought against them. It was a strange
age, in which a great and noble people were mysteriously hurried into
sins, follies and disgraces seemingly foreign to their character. It
was because the people had surrendered their government into alien and
shameless hands. They deserved their punishment; for it is nothing less
than a crime, having known liberty, either to deny it to others, or for
the sake of earthly advantage to consent to any compromise of it in
ourselves.



CHAPTER TWELFTH

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM AND THE STAMP ACT


The gathering of soldiers from France, England and the colonies, and
the rousing of the Indians on one side and the other, made the great
forest which stretched across northern New York and New England
populous with troops and resonant with the sounds of war. Those solemn
woodland aisles and quiet glades were desecrated by marchings and
campings, and in the ravines and recesses lay the corpses of men in
uniforms, the grim remains of peasants who had been born three thousand
miles away. Passing through the depths of the wilderness, apparently
remote from all human habitation, suddenly one would come upon a
fortress, frowning with heavy guns, and surrounded by the log-built
barracks of the soldiery, who, in the intervals of siege and combat,
passed their days impatiently, thinking of the distant homes from which
they came, and muttering their discontent at inaction and uncertainty.
The region round the junction of Lake George and Lake Champlain, where
stood the strongholds of Fort Edward and Fort William Henry, of Crown
Point and Ticonderoga, was the scene of many desperate conflicts,
between 1758 and 1780; and the wolves of the forest, and the bears of
the Vermont mountains, were disturbed in their lairs by the tumults and
the restless evolutions, and wandered eastward until they came among
the startled hamlets and frontier farms of the settlements. The
savagery of man, surpassing theirs, drove them to seek shelter amid the
abodes of man himself; but there was no safety for them there, as many
a bloody head and paws, trophies of rustic marksmanship, attested. The
dominion of the wilderness was approaching its end in America.
Everywhere you might hear the roll of the drum, and there was no family
but had its soldier, and few that did not have their dead. There were a
score of thousand British troops in the northern provinces, and every
week brought rumors and alarms, and portents of victory or defeat. The
haggard post-rider came galloping in with news from north and west,
which the throng of anxious village folks gather to hear. There have
been skirmishes, successes, retreats, surprises, massacres,
retaliations; there is news from Niagara and Oswego on far away Lake
Ontario, and echoes of the guns at Ticonderoga. There are proclamations
for enlistment, and requisitions for ammunition; and the tailors in the
towns are busy cutting out scarlet uniforms and decorating them with
gold braid. Markets for the supply of troops are established in the
woods, far from any settled habitations, where shrewd farmers bargain
with the hungry soldiery for carcasses of pigs and beeves, and for
disheveled hens from distant farmyards; the butcher's shop is kept
under the spreading brandies of the trees, from whose low limbs dangle
the tempting wares, and a stump serves as a chopping-block. Under the
shrubbery, where the sun cannot penetrate, are stored home-made firkins
full of yellow butter, and great cheeses, and heaps of substantial
home-baked bread. Kegs of hard cider and spruce beer and perhaps more
potent brews are abroach, and behind the haggling and jesting and
bustle you may catch the sound of muskets or the whoop of the Indians
from afar. Meanwhile, in the settlements, all manner of industries were
stimulated, and a great number of women throughout the country, left to
take care of their children and themselves by the absence of their
men-folk, went into business of all kinds, and drove a thriving trade.
Lotteries were also popular, the promoters retaining a good share of
the profits after the nominal object of the transaction had been
attained. It was well that the war operations were carried on far from
the populous regions, so that only the fighters themselves were
involved in the immediate consequences. The battle was for the homes of
posterity, where as yet the woodman's ax had never been heard, except
to provide defenses against death, instead of habitations for life.
Those who could not go to the war sat round the broad country
hearthstones at night, with the fire of logs leaping up the great
cavern of the chimney, telling stories of past exploits, speculating as
to the present, praying perhaps for the future, and pausing now and
then to listen to strange noises abroad in the night-ridden
sky--strains of ghostly music playing a march or a charge, or the
thunder of phantom guns.

Governor Shirley, who while in France in 1749 had married a French wife
and brought her home with him, and who for a while had the chief
command of the king's forces in America, was in disfavor with the
people, who suspected his wife of sending treasonable news to the
enemy; and having also proved inefficient as a soldier, he was recalled
to England in 1756, and vanished thenceforth as a factor in American
affairs, in which his influence had always been selfish and illiberal,
if not worse. Thomas Pownall succeeded him and held his position for
three years, when he was transferred to South Carolina. He was a man of
fashion, and of little weight. From the shuffle of men who appeared and
disappeared during the early years of the war, a few stand out in
permanent distinctness. Washington's reputation steadily increased;
Amherst, Wolfe and Lyman achieved distinction on the English side, and
Montcalm and Dieskau on the French. In 1757, General Loudoun, one of
the agents of the despoiling of Acadia, made a professed attempt to
capture Louisburg, which had been given back to the French at the last
peace; but after wasting a summer in vain drilling of his forces,
retired in dismay on learning that the French fleet outnumbered his own
by one vessel. The place was bombarded and taken the next year by
Amherst and Wolfe, but Halifax was the English headquarters in that
region. Before this however, in the summer of 1755, immediately after
the defeat of Braddock, an army of New Englanders assembled at Albany
to capture Crown Point, where the French had called together every
able-bodied man available. William Johnson was commander, and
associated with him was Phinehas Lyman, a natural-born soldier. They
marched to the southern shore of what the French called the Lake of the
Holy Sacrament, but which Johnson thought would better be named Lake
George. The army, with its Indian allies, numbered about thirty-four
hundred; a camping ground was cleared, but no intrenchments were thrown
up; no enemy seemed to be within reach. Dieskau, informed of the
advance, turned from his design against Oswego in the west, and marched
for Fort Edward, in the rear of Johnson's troops. By a mistake of the
guide he found himself approaching the open camp. Johnson sent a
Massachusetts man, Ephraim Williams, with a thousand troops, to save
Fort Edward. They nearly fell into an ambush; as it was, their party
was overpowered by the enemy; Williams was killed, but Whiting of
Connecticut guarded the retreat. During the action, a redoubt of logs
had been constructed in the camp, and was strengthened with baggage and
wagons. The Americans, with their fowling-pieces, defended this place
for five hours against two hundred regular French troops, six hundred
Canadians, and as many Indians. Johnson received a scratch early in the
engagement, and made it an excuse to retire; and Lyman assumed
direction. Dieskau bravely led the French regulars, nearly all of whom
were killed; he was four times wounded; the Canadians were intimidated.
At length, about half past four in the afternoon, the French retreated,
though the American losses equaled theirs; a body of them were pursued
by Macginnes of New Hampshire and left their baggage behind them in
their haste; but the body of Macginnes also remained on the field. The
credit for this battle, won by Lyman, was given by the English
government to Johnson, who received a baronetcy and a "tip" of five
thousand pounds. It would have been the first step in a series of
successes had not Johnson, instead of following up his victory, timidly
remained in camp, building Fort William Henry; and when winter
approached, he disbanded the New Englanders and retired. The French had
taken advantage of their opportunity to intrench themselves in
Ticonderoga, which was destined to become a name of awe for the
colonists. At the same time that Braddock marched on Fort Duquesne,
Shirley had set out with two thousand men to capture the fort at
Niagara, garrisoned by but thirty ill-armed men; the intention being to
form a junction there with the all-conquering Braddock. The latter's
annihilation took all the heart out of the superserviceable Shirley; he
got no further than Oswego, where he frittered the summer away, and
then retreated under a cloud of pretexts. He and the other royal
officials were all this while pleading for a general fund to be created
by Parliament, or in any other manner, so that a fund there be; and
asserting that the frontiers would otherwise be, and in fact were,
defenseless. In the face of such tales the colonies were of their own
motion providing all the necessary supplies for war, and Franklin had
taken personal charge of the northwest border. But the English ministry
saw in these measures only increasing peril from popular power, and
pushed forward a scheme for a military dictatorship. In May, 1756, war
was formally declared, and England arbitrarily forbade other nations to
carry French merchandise in their ships. Abercrombie was chosen general
for the prosecution of the campaign in America, and arrived at Albany,
after much dilatoriness, in June. Bradstreet reported that he had put
stores into Oswego for five thousand men; and that the place was
already threatened by the enemy. Still the English delayed. Montcalm
arrived at Quebec to lead the French army, and immediately planned the
capture of Oswego. In August he took an outlying redoubt, and the
garrison of Oswego surrendered just as he was about to open fire upon
it. Sixteen hundred prisoners, over a hundred cannon, stores, boats and
money were the prize; and Montcalm destroyed the fort and returned in
triumph. Loudoun and Abercrombie, with an army of thousands of men,
which could have taken Canada with ease, thought only of keeping out of
Montcalm's way, pleading in excuse that they feared to trust the
"provincials"--who had thus far done all the fighting that had been
done, and won all the successes. In spite of the remonstrances of the
civic authorities, the British troops and officers were billeted upon
New York and Philadelphia. Two more frightened generals were never
seen; and the provinces were left open to the enemy's attack. But the
Americans took the war into their own hands. John Armstrong of
Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, crossed the Alleghanies in September
and in a desperate fight destroyed an Indian tribe that had been
massacring along the border, burned their town and blew up their
powder. In January of 1757, Stark, a daring ranger, with seventy men,
made a dash on Lake George, and engaged a party of two hundred and
fifty French. About the same time, at Philadelphia and Boston it was
voted to raise men for the service; a hundred thousand pounds was also
voted, but the proprietors refused to pay their quota, and represented
in England that the Pennsylvanians were obstructing the measures for
defense. Franklin, sent to England to remonstrate, was told that the
king was the legislator of the colonies. All action was paralyzed by
the corruption and cowardice of the royal officials. The pusillanimity
of Loudoun, with his ten thousand men and powerful fleet in Nova
Scotia, has been already mentioned. In July Montcalm, with a mixed
force of more than seven thousand, advanced upon Fort William Henry.
Webb, who should have opposed him, retreated, leaving Monro with five
hundred men to hold the fort. He refused Montcalm's summons to
surrender; Webb, who might still have saved him, refused to do so; he
fought until his ammunition was gone and half his guns burst, and then
surrendered upon Montcalm's promise of the honors of war and an escort
out of the country. But the Indians had got rum from the English stores
and passed the night in drunken revelry; in the morning they set upon
the unarmed English as they left the fort, and began to plunder and
tomahawk them. Montcalm and his officers did their utmost to stop the
treacherous outrage; but thirty men were murdered. Montcalm has been
treated leniently by history; he was indeed a brilliant and heroic
soldier, and he had the crowning honor of dying bravely at Quebec; but
he cannot be held blameless in this affair. He had taught the Indians
that he was as one of themselves, had omitted no means of securing
their amity; had danced and sung with them and smiled approvingly on
their butcherings and scalpings; and he had no right to imagine that
they would believe him sincere in his promise to spare the prisoners.
It was too late for him to cry "Kill me, but spare them!" after the
massacre had commenced. It was his duty to have taken measures to
render such a thing impossible beforehand. He had touched pitch, and
was denied.

Disgrace and panic reigned among all the English commanders. Webb
whimpered to be allowed to fall back on the Hudson with his six
thousand men; Loudoun cowered in New York with his large army, and
could think of no better way of defending the northwest frontier than
by intrenching himself on Long Island. There was not an Englishman in
the Ohio or the St. Lawrence Basins. Everywhere beyond the narrow strip
of the colonies the French were paramount. In Europe, England's
position was almost as contemptible. Such was the result of the attempt
of the aristocracy to rule England. There was only one man who could
save England, and he was an old man, poor, a commoner, and sick almost
to death. But in 1757 William Pitt was called to the English helm,
accepted the responsibility, and steered the country from her darkest
to her most brilliant hour. The campaigns which drove the soldiers of
Louis XV. out of America were the first chapter of the movement which
ended in the expulsion of the British from the territory of the United
States. Catholicism and Protestantism were arrayed against each other
for the last time. Pitt was the man of the people; his ambition, though
generous, was as great as his abilities; the colonies knew him as their
friend. "I can save this country, and nobody else can," he said; and
bent his final energies to making England the foremost nation in the
world, and the most respected. The faith of Rome allied France with
Austria; and Prussia, with Frederic the Great, standing as the sole
bulwark of Protestantism on the Continent, was inevitably drawn toward
England.

With one movement of his all-powerful hand, Pitt reversed the
oppressive and suicidal policy of the colonial administration. Loudoun
was recalled; his excuses were vain. Amherst and Wolfe were sent out.
The colonies were told that no compulsion should be put upon them; they
were expected to levy, clothe and pay their men, but the government
would repay their outlay. Instantly they responded, and their
contributions exceeded all anticipation. Massachusetts taxed herself
thirteen and fourpence in the pound. Provincial officers not above
colonel ranked with the British, and a new spirit animated all. On the
other hand, Canada suffered from famine, and Montcalm foresaw eventual
defeat. Amherst and Wolfe, with ten thousand men, captured Louisburg
and destroyed the fortifications. At the same time, a great army was
collected against Ticonderoga. Nine thousand provincials, with Stark,
Israel Putnam, and six hundred New England rangers, camped side by side
with over six thousand troops of the British regulars under Abercrombie
and Lord Howe. The French under Montcalm had erected Fort Carillon on
the outlet from Lake George to Champlain, approachable only from the
northwest. It was here that he planned his defense. The English
disembarked on the west side of the lake, protected by Point Howe. In
marching round the bend they came upon a French party of three hundred
and defeated them, Howe falling in the first attack. Montcalm was
behind intrenchments with thirty-six hundred men; Abercrombie rashly
gave orders to carry the works by storm without waiting for cannon, but
was careful to remain far in the rear during the action. The attack was
most gallantly and persistently delivered; nearly two thousand men,
mostly regulars, were killed; and, at the end of the murderous day,
Montcalm remained master of the field. Abercrombie still had four times
as many men as Montcalm, and with his artillery could easily have
carried the works and captured Ticonderoga; but he was by this time
"distilled almost to a jelly by the act of fear" and fled headlong at
once. Montcalm had not yet met his match.

Bradstreet, however, with seven hundred Massachusetts men and eleven
hundred New Yorkers, crossed Lake Ontario and took Port Frontenac, the
garrison fleeing at their approach. Amherst, on hearing of
Abercrombie's cowardice, embarked for Boston with over four thousand
men, marched thence to Albany and on to the camp; Abercrombie was sent
to England, and Amherst took his place as chief. The capture of Fort
Duquesne was the first thing planned. Over forty-five hundred men were
raised in South Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia; Joseph Forbes
commanded them as brigadier-general; Washington led the Virginians;
John Armstrong and the boy, Anthony Wayne, were with the
Pennsylvanians. Washington, who had clad part of his men in Indian
deerskins, wanted to follow Braddock's line of march; but Forbes, who
had not long to live, though his brain remained clear, preferred to
build a road by which ready communication with Philadelphia could be
kept up. Washington got news that the Fort had but eight hundred
defenders, and a strong reconnaissance was sent forward, without his
knowledge, under Major Grant, who, thinking he had the French at
advantage, exposed himself and was defeated with a loss of three
hundred. The remaining five hundred reached camp in good order, thanks
to the discipline which had been given them by Washington. Forbes had
decided to advance no further that season--it was then November; but
Washington had information which caused him to gain permission to
advance with twenty-five hundred provincials, and he occupied
intrenchments near Duquesne. Nine days later the rest of the army
arrived; and the garrison of the Fort set fire to it at night and fled.
The place was entered by the troops, Armstrong raised the British flag,
and at Forbes' suggestion it was rechristened Pittsburgh. And there,
above the confluence of the two rivers, the city named after the Great
Commoner stands to-day. A vast and fertile country was thenceforward
opened to the east. After burying the bleaching bones of the men killed
under Braddock, a garrison was left on the spot, and the rest of the
army returned.

Washington, who had seen five years' arduous service, resigned his
commission, and after receiving cordial honors from his fellow officers
and the Virginia legislature, married the widow, Martha Custis, and
settled down as a planter in Mount Vernon. He was a delegate to the
Virginia House of Burgesses and to the Continental Congresses of 1774
and 1775; but it was not until the latter year that he reappeared as a
soldier, accepting the command of the Continental forces on the 15th of
June, not against the French, but against the English.

In 1759 the genius and spirit of Pitt began to be fully felt. The
English were triumphant in Europe, and a comprehensive plan for the
conquest of Canada was intrusted for the first time to men capable of
carrying it out. Thousands of men were enlisted and paid for by the
colonies north of Maryland. Stanwix, Amherst, Prideaux and Wolfe were
the chiefs in command. Fifty thousand English and provincial troops
were opposed by not more than an eighth as many half-starved Frenchmen
and Canadians. Montcalm had no illusions; he told the French Minister
of War that, barring extraordinary accidents, Canada's hour had come;
but he "was resolved to find his grave under the ruins of the colony."
And young General Wolfe had said, on being given the department of the
St. Lawrence, "I feel called upon to justify the notice taken of me by
such exertions and exposure of myself as will probably lead to my
fall." The premonitions of both these valiant soldiers were fulfilled.
Wolfe was at this time thirty-two years of age, and had spent half his
life in the army. The Marquis de Montcalm was forty-seven when he fell
on the Plains of Abraham. Neither general had been defeated up to the
moment they faced each other; neither could succumb to any less worthy
adversary.

But the first objective point was not Quebec, but Fort Niagara, which,
standing between Erie and Ontario, commanded the fur trade of the
country to the west. Prideaux, with an adequate force of English,
Americans and Indians, invested the place in July, D'Aubry, the French
commander, bringing up twelve hundred men to relieve it. Just before
the action, Prideaux was killed by the bursting of a mountain howitzer,
but Sir William Johnson was at hand to take his place. On the 24th the
battle took place; the French were flanked by the English Indians, and
charged by the English; they broke and fled, and the Fort surrendered
next day. Stanwix had meanwhile taken possession of all the French
posts between Pittsburgh and Erie. The English had got their enemy on
the run all along the line. Gage was the only English officer to
disgrace himself in this campaign; he squirmed out of compliance with
Amherst's order to occupy the passes of Ogdensburgh. Amherst, with
artillery and eleven thousand men, advanced on the hitherto invincible
Ticonderoga. The French knew they were beaten, and therefore, instead
of fighting, abandoned the famous stronghold and Crown Point, and
retreated down to Isle aux Nois, whither Amherst should have followed
them. Instead of doing so, he took to building and repairing
fortifications--the last infirmity of military minds of a certain
order--and finally went into winter quarters with nothing further done.
Amherst, at the end of the war, received the routine rewards of a
well-meaning and not defeated commander-in-chief; but it was Wolfe who
won immortality.

He collected his force of eight thousand men, including two battalions
of "Royal Americans," at Louisburg; among his ship captains was Cook
the explorer; Lieutenant-colonel Howe commanded a body of light
infantry. Before the end of June the army stepped ashore on the island
that fills the channel of the St. Lawrence below Quebec, called the
Isle of Orleans. Montcalm's camp was between them and the tall
acclivity on which stood the famous fortress, which had defied capture
for a hundred and thirty years. The French outnumbered the English, but
neither the physical condition nor the morale of their troops was good.
That beetling cliff was the ally on which Montcalm most depended. All
the landing-places up stream for nine miles had been fortified: the
small river St. Charles covered with its sedgy marshes the approach on
the north and east, while on the west another stream, the Montmorenci,
rising nearly at the same place as the St. Charles, falls in cataracts
into the St. Lawrence nine miles above the citadel. All these natural
features had been improved by military art. High up, north and west of
the city, spread the broad Plains of Abraham.

Wolfe's fleet commanded the river and the south shore. Point Levi, on
this shore, opposite Quebec, was fortified by the English, and siege
guns were mounted there, the channel being but a mile wide; the lower
town could be reached by the red-hot balls, but not the lofty citadel.
After personally examining the region during the greater part of July,
Wolfe decided on a double attack; one party to ford the Montmorenci,
which was practicable at a certain hour of the tide, and the other to
cross over in boats from Point Levi. But the boats grounded on some
rocks in the channel; and Wolfe was repulsed at the Montmorenci. Four
hundred men were lost. An expedition was now sent up stream to open
communication with Amherst; but though it was learned that Niagara,
Crown Point and Ticonderoga had fallen, Amherst did not appear. Wolfe
must do his work alone; the entire population of the country was
against him, and the strongest natural fortification in the world. His
eager anxiety threw him into a fever. "My constitution is entirely
ruined, without the consolation of having done any considerable service
to the state, and without any prospect of it," was what he wrote to the
English government. Four days afterward he was dying victorious on the
Plains of Abraham.

The early Canadian winter would soon be at hand. The impossible must be
done, and at once. Wolfe, after several desperate proposals of his had
been rejected by the council of war, made a feint in force up the
river, in the hope of getting Montcalm where he could fight him. He
scrutinized the precipitous north shore as with a magnifying glass. At
last, on the 11th of September, the hope that had so long been burning
within him was gratified. But what a hope! A headlong goat-track cleft
its zigzag way up the awful steep, and emerged at last upon the dizzy
and breathless height above. Two men could scarce climb abreast in it;
and even this was defended by fortifications, and at the summit,
against the sky, tents could be seen. Yet this was the only way to
victory: only by this heartbreaking path could England drive France
from the western continent, and give a mighty nation to the world.
Wolfe saw, and was content; where one man could go, thousands might
follow. And he perceived that the very difficulty of the enterprise was
the best assurance of its success. The place was defended indeed, but
not strongly. Montcalm knew what daring could accomplish, but even he
had not dreamed of daring such as this. Wolfe, with a great soul
kindled into flame by the resolve to achieve a feat almost beyond
mortal limitations, dared it, and prevailed.

Till the hour of action, he kept his troops far up the stream. By the
13th, all preparations were made. Night came on, calm, like the heart
of the hero who knows that the culminating moment of his destiny has
arrived. At such a crisis, the mortal part of the man is transfigured
by the towering spirit, and his eyes pierce through the veils of
things. His life lies beneath him, and he contemplates its vicissitudes
with the high tranquillity of an immortal freedom. What is death to him
who has already triumphed over the fetters of the flesh, and tasted the
drink of immortality? He is the trustee of the purpose of God; and the
guerdon his deed deserves can be nothing less noble than to die.

It was at one in the morning that the adventure was begun. Silently the
boats moved down the stream, the dark ships following in silence.
Thousands of brave hearts beat with heroic resolve beneath the eternal
stars. The shadowy cove was gained; Wolfe's foot has touched the shore;
as the armed figures follow and gather at the foot of the ascent, no
words are spoken, but what an eloquence in those faces! Upward they
climb, afire with zeal; Howe has won a battery; upward! the picket on
the height, too late aroused from sleep by the stern miracle, is
overpowered. With panting lungs man after man tops the ascent and sees
the darkling plain and forms in line with his comrades, while still the
stream winds up endlessly from the depths below. The earth is giving
birth to an army. Coiling upward, deploying, ranging out, rank after
rank they are extended along the front of the forest, with Quebec
before them. No drum has beat; no bugle has spoken; but Wolfe is there,
his spirit is in five thousand breasts, and there needs no trumpet for
the battle.

As the last of the army formed upon the rugged field, dawn broke upon
the east, and soon the early sunshine sparkled on their weapons and
glowed along the ranks of English red. Meanwhile Montcalm had been
apprised; his first instinct of incredulity had been swept away by the
inevitable truth, and he manned himself for the struggle. Often had he
conquered against odds; but now his spirit must bow before a spirit
stronger than his, as Antony's before Augustus. And what had he to
oppose against the seasoned veterans of the English army, thrice armed
in the consciousness of their unparalleled achievement?--Five weak and
astounded battalions, and a horde of inchoate peasants. But Montcalm
did not falter; by ten he had taken up his position, and by eleven,
after some ineffectual cannonading, to allow time for the arrival of
re-enforcements which came not, he led the charge. The attack was
disordered by the uneven ground, the fences and the ravines; and it was
broken by the granite front of the English (three-fourths of them
Americans) and their long-reserved and withering fire. The
undisciplined Canadians flinched from that certain death; and Wolfe,
advancing on them with his grenadiers, saw them melt away before the
cold steel could reach them. The two leaders faced each other, both
equally undaunted and alert; it was like a duel between them; no
opening was missed, no chance neglected. The smoke hung in the still
air of morning; the long lines of men swayed and undulated beneath it
obscurely, and the roar of musketry dinned terribly in the ear, here
slackening for a moment, there breaking forth in volleying thunders;
and men were dropping everywhere; there were shoutings from the
captains, the fierce crash of cheers, yells of triumph or agony, and
the faint groans of the wounded unto death. Wolfe was hit, but he did
not heed it; Montcalm has received a musket ball, but he cannot yet
die. The English battle does not yield; it advances, the light of
victory is upon it. Backward stagger the French; Montcalm strives to
check the fatal movement, but the flying death has torn its way through
his body, and he can no more. Wolfe, even as the day was won, got his
death wound in the breast, but "Support me--don't let my brave fellows
see me drop," he gasped out. His thoughts were with his army; let the
retreat of the enemy be cut off; and he died with a happy will, and
with God's name on his lips. Montcalm lingered, suggesting means by
which to retrieve the day; but the power of France died with him.
Quebec was lost and won; and human history was turned into a new
channel, and no longer flowing through the caverns of mediaeval error,
rolled its current toward the sunlight of liberty and progress. "The
more a man is versed in business, the more he finds the hand of
Providence everywhere," was the reply of William Pitt, when Parliament
congratulated him on the victory. He had wrought his plans with wisdom
and zeal; but "except the Lord build the city, they labor in vain who
build it." There have been great statesmen and brave soldiers, before
Pitt and Wolfe, and since; but there could be only one fall of Quebec,
with all which that implied.

The following spring and summer were overshadowed by an unrighteous war
against the Cherokees, precipitated by the royalist governor of
Virginia, Lyttleton. An attempt by the French under Levi to recapture
Quebec failed, in spite of the folly of the English commander, Murray;
Pitt had foreseen the effort, and destroyed it with an English fleet.
Amherst, in his own tortoise-like way, advanced and took possession of
Montreal; and by permission of the Indian, Pontiac, who regarded
himself as lord of the country, the English flag was carried to the
outposts. Canada had surrendered; in the terms imposed, property and
the religious faith of the people were respected; but nothing was
promised them in the way of civil liberty. In discussing the European
peace that was now looked for, question was raised whether to restore
Canada, or the West Indian island of Guadaloupe, to France. Some, who
feared that the retention of Canada would too much incline the colonies
to independence, favored its return. But Franklin said that Canada
would be a source of strength to England. The expense of defending that
vast frontier would be saved; the rapidly increasing population would
absorb English manufactures without limit, and their necessary devotion
to farming would diminish their competition as manufacturers. He
pointed out that their differences in governments and mutual jealousies
made their united action against England unthinkable, "unless you
grossly abuse them."--"Very true: that, I see, will happen," returned
the English lawyer Pratt, afterward Lord Cam den, the attorney-general.
But Pitt would not listen to Canada's being given up; he was for
England, not for any English clique. On the other hand, one of those
cliques was preparing to carry out the long meditated taxation of the
colonies; and the sudden death of George II., bringing his son to the
throne, favored their purpose; for the Third George had character and
energy, and not a little intelligence for a king; and he was soon seen
to intend the re-establishment of the royal prerogative in all its
integrity. As a preliminary step to this end, he accepted Pitt's
resignation in October, 1761.

Much to the displeasure of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson, already
Judge of Probate, was by Governor Bernard appointed to the Chief
Justiceship of the colony; the royalist direction of his sympathies was
known. In February, 1761, he heard argument in court as to whether
revenue officers had power to call in executive assistance to enforce
the acts of trade. The crown lawyer argued that to refuse it was to
deny the sovereignty of the English Parliament in the colonies. Then
James Otis arose, and made a protest which tingled through the whole
colony, and was the first direct blow aimed against English domination.
Power such as was asked for, he said, had already cost one king of
England his head and another his throne. Writs of assistance were open
to intolerable abuse; were the instrument of arbitrary power and
destructive of the fundamental principles of law. Reason and the
constitution were against them. "No act of Parliament can establish
such a writ: an act of Parliament against the constitution is void!"
These words were the seed of revolution. Hutchinson was frightened, but
succeeded in persuading his colleagues to postpone decision until he
had written to England. The English instruction was to enforce the law,
and the judges acted accordingly; but the people replied by electing
Otis to the assembly; and Hutchinson was more distrusted than ever. At
the same time, in Virginia, Richard Henry Lee denounced the slave
trade; the legislature indorsed his plea, but England denied it. South
Carolina was alienated by the same decree, and also by an unpopular war
against the Cherokees. In New York, the appointment of a judge "during
the king's pleasure" roused the assembly; but the result of their
remonstrance was that all colonial governors were instructed from
England to grant no judicial commissions but during the king's
pleasure. This was to make the Bench the instrument of the Prerogative.
A judge acted on questions of property, without a jury, on information
furnished by crown officers, and derived emoluments from his own award
of forfeitures; and the governor would favor large seizures because he
got one-third of the spoils. All the assemblies could do, for the
present, was to reduce salaries; but that did not make the offenders
any less avaricious. Moreover, the king began the practice of paying
them in spite of the assemblies, and reproved the latter for "not being
animated by a sense of their duty to their king and country."

James Otis continued to be the voice of the colonies. "Kings were made
for the good of the people, not the people for them. By the laws of God
and nature, government must not raise taxes on the property of the
people without the consent of the people. To tax without the assembly's
consent was the same in principle as for the king and the House of
Lords to usurp legislative authority in England." For the utterance of
these sentiments he was honored by the hearty support of the people,
and still more by the denunciations of men of the Hutchinson sort. The
ministers were not silent on the popular side. "May Heaven blast the
designs, though not the soul," said Mayhew, with Christian
discrimination, "of whoever he be among us who shall have the hardiness
to attack the people's rights!" King George's answer, as soon as he had
concluded the peace with France and Spain, in 1763, was to take
measures to terrorize the colonists by sending out an army of twenty
battalions to be kept permanently in America, the expenses of which the
colonists were to pay. But by enforcing the acts of trade, England had
now made herself the enemy of the whole civilized world, and the
American colonies would not be without allies in the struggle that was
drawing near.

While these matters were in agitation among the white people, the
Indians in the north were discovering grievances of their own. Pontiac,
an Ottawa chief, and by his personal abilities the natural leader of
many tribes, was the instigator and center of the revolt. The English
masters of Canada had showed themselves less congenial to the red men
than the French had done; they could not understand that savages had
any rights which they were bound to respect; while Pontiac conceived
that no white man could live in the wilderness without his permission.
Upon this issue, trouble was inevitable; and Pontiac planned a general
movement of all the Indians in the north against the colonists. The
success of the scheme could of course be only momentary; that it
attained the dignity of a "war" was due to the influence and energy of
the Indian general. His design was of broad scope, embracing a
simultaneous attack on all the English frontier forts; a wide coalition
of tribes was effected; and though their tactics were not essentially
different from those heretofore employed by savages, yet their
possession of arms, their skill in their use, and their numbers, made
their onslaughts formidable. On several occasions they effected their
entry into the forts by stratagem: a tale of misery told by a squaw; a
ball in a game struck toward the door of the stronghold; professedly
amicable conferences suddenly becoming massacres; such were the naive
yet successful ruses employed. Many lives were lost, and the border
lands were laid waste and panicstricken; but it was impossible for the
Indians to hold together, and their victories hastened their undoing.
No general engagement, of course, was fought, but Pontiac's authority
gradually abated, and he was finally compelled to go into retirement.
His Conspiracy has its picturesque side, but it is not organically
related to our history; it was merely a fresh expression of the
familiar fact that there could be no sincere friendship between the
white and the red. The former could live with the latter if they would
live like them; but no attempt to reverse the case could succeed. The
solemnity with which the practice of signing treaties of peace with the
Indians has uniformly been kept up is one of the curious features of
our colonial annals, and indeed of later times. Indians will keep the
peace without treaties, if they are kindly used and given liberty to do
as they please; but no engagement is binding on them after they deem
themselves wronged. They are pleased by the formalities, the speeches,
and the gifts that accompany such conferences; they like to exchange
compliments, and to play with belts of wampum; and it is possible that
when they make their promises, they think they will keep them. They can
understand the advantages of trade, and will make some sacrifice of
their pride or convenience to secure them. But the mind is never
dominant in them; the tides of passion flood it, and their wild nature
carries them away. It may be surmised that we should have had fewer
Indian troubles, had we never entered into any treaty with them. But
thousands of treaties have been made, and broken, sometimes by one
side, sometimes by the other, but always by one of the two. And then,
punishments must be administered; but if punishment is for improvement,
it has been as ineffective as the treaties. The only rational thing to
do with an Indian is to kill him; and yet it may fairly be doubted
whether complete moral justification could be shown for the killing of
any Indian since Columbus landed at San Salvador.--As for Pontiac, a
keg of liquor was inducement sufficient to one of his own race to
murder him, five years after the failure of his revolt.

Toward the end of September, Jenkinson, Secretary of the Treasury in
England, presented the draft for an American stamp-tax--the true
authorship of which was never disclosed. This tax was the result of the
argument of exclusion applied to the problem, How to raise a permanent
and sufficient revenue from the colonies. Foreign and internal commerce
taxes would not serve, because such commerce was forbidden by the
Navigation Acts. A poll-tax would be inequitable to the slaveholders.
Land-taxes could not be collected. Exchequer-bills were against an act
of Parliament. Nothing but a stamp-tax remained, and all persons
concerned were in favor of it, the colonists only excepted. Their
opinion was that taxation without representation was an iniquity. But
they did not perhaps consider that England owed a debt of seven hundred
million dollars which must be provided for somehow; and that the
interests of the empire demanded, in the opinion of those who were at
its head, that the colonies be ruled with a stronger hand than
heretofore. George Grenville accepted the responsibility of the act.

The king gave his consent to the employment of the entire official
force of the colonies to prevent infringements of the Navigation Acts,
and the army and navy were to assist them. There were large emoluments
for seizures, and the right of search was unrestricted, afloat or
ashore. In order to diminish the danger of union between the colonies,
a new distribution, or alteration of boundaries, was adopted, with a
view to increasing their number. But the country between the
Alleghanies and the Mississippi was to be closed to colonization, lest
it should prove impossible to control settlers at such a distance. It
proved, of course, still less possible to prevent emigration thither.
But all seemed going well, and the Grenville ministry was so firmly
established that nothing seemed able to shake it. The fact that a young
Virginia lawyer, Patrick Henry by name, had said in the course of an
argument against the claim of a clergyman for the value of some
tobacco, that a king who annuls salutary laws is a tyrant, and forfeits
all right to obedience; and that if ministers fail to fulfill the uses
for which they were ordained, the community may justly strip them of
their appointments--this circumstance probably did not come to the ears
of the British ministry; but it had its effect in Virginia. Grenville,
however, was induced by the appeals of some influential Americans in
London to postpone his tax for a year, so that the assemblies might
have an opportunity to consent to it. By way of tempting them to do
this, he sought for special inducements; he revived the hemp and flax
bounties; he permitted rice to be carried south of Carolina and Georgia
on payment of half subsidy; and he removed the restrictions on the New
England whale fishery. He then informed Parliament of his purpose of
applying the stamp-tax to America, and asked if any member wished to
question the right of Parliament to impose such a tax. In a full house,
not a single person rose to object. The king gave it his "hearty"
approval. It only remained for America humbly and gratefully to accept
it.

First came comments. "If taxes are laid upon us in any shape, without
our having a legal representation where they are laid, are we not
reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of
tributary slaves?" asked Samuel Adams of Boston. "These duties are only
the beginning of evils," said Livingston of New York. "Acts of
Parliament against natural equity are void," Otis affirmed; and in a
lucid and cogent analysis of the principles and ends of government he
pointed out that the best good of the people could be secured only by a
supreme legislative and executive ultimately in the people; but a
universal congress being impracticable, representation was substituted:
"but to bring the powers of all into the hands of one or some few, and
to make them hereditary, is the interested work of the weak and wicked.
Nothing but life and liberty are actually hereditable.... British
colonists do not hold their liberties or their lands by so slippery a
tenure as the will of princes; the colonists are common children of the
same Creator with their brethren in Great Britain.... A time may come
when Parliament shall declare every American charter void; but the
natural, inherent rights of the colonists as men and citizens can never
be abolished. The colonists know the blood and treasure independence
would cost. They will never think of it till driven to it as the last
fatal resort against ministerial oppression: but human nature must and
will be rescued from the general slavery that has so long triumphed
over the species." The immediate practical result was, that the
colonists pledged themselves to use nothing of English manufacture,
even to going without lamb to save wool. And even Hutchinson remarked
that if England had paid as much for the support of the wars as had
been voluntarily paid by the colonists, there would have been no great
increase in the national debt.

All this made no impression in England. The dregs of the Canadian
population were a handful of disreputable Protestant ex-officers,
traders and publicans--"the most immoral collection of men I ever
knew," as Murray said--but judges and juries were selected from these
gentry, and the Catholics were disfranchised. In New England,
boundaries were rearranged, and colonists had to buy new titles. New
York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, protested before Parliament against
the taxation scheme; Philadelphia at first petitioned to be delivered
from the selfishness of its proprietors even at the cost of becoming a
royal colony; but later, Franklin advised that they grant supplies to
the crown only when required of them "in the usual constitutional
manner." George Wythe, speaking for Virginia, remonstrated against
measures "fitter for exiles driven from their country after
ignominiously forfeiting its favor and protection, than for the
posterity of loyal Britons." Yet there were many royalist Americans who
were urgent that English rule should be strengthened; and the English
Board of Trade declared that the protests of the colonies showed "a
most indecent disrespect to the legislature of Great Britain." The king
decreed that in all military matters in America the orders of the
commander-in-chief there, and under him of the brigadiers, should be
supreme; and only in the absence of these officers might the governors
give the word. This became important on the occasion of the "Boston
Massacre" a few years later. In Parliament, Grenville said that he
would never lend a hand toward forging chains for America, "lest in so
doing I forge them for myself"; but he shuffled out of the American
demand not to be taxed without representation by declaring that
Parliament was "the common council of the whole empire," and added that
America was to all intents and purposes as much represented in
Parliament as many Englishmen. This assertion brought to his feet
Barré, the companion of Wolfe at Quebec. He denied that America was
virtually represented, and said that the House was ignorant of American
affairs. Charles Townshend, who posed as an infallible authority on
America, replied that the last war had cost the colonies little though
they had profited much by it; and now these "American children, planted
by our care, nourished up to strength and opulence by our indulgence,
and protected by our arms, grudge to contribute their mite to relieve
us from the heavy burden under which we lie."

Barré could not restrain his indignation. In the course of a fiery
rejoinder he uttered truths that made him the most loved Englishman in
America, when his words were published there. "Your oppressions planted
them in America," he thundered. "They met with pleasure all hardships
compared with those they suffered in their own country. They grew by
your neglect of them: as soon as you began to care for them, deputies
of members of this house were sent to spy out their liberties, to
misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them; men whose behavior
caused the blood of those Sons of Liberty to recoil within them: men
who were often glad, by going to a foreign country, to escape being
brought to the bar of justice in their own. They 'protected by your
arms'?--They have, amid their constant and laborious industry, nobly
taken up arms for the defense of a country whose frontier was drenched
in blood, while its interior parts yielded all its little savings to
your emolument. And believe me--remember--the same spirit of freedom
which actuated that people at first will accompany them still. They are
as truly loyal as any subjects the king has; but a people jealous of
their liberties, and who will vindicate them, if ever they should be
violated." But Grenville had gone too far to retreat; the case went
against America by two hundred and forty-five to forty-nine; and only
Beckford and Conway were on record as denying the power of Parliament
to enact the tax. All petitions from the colonies were refused. "We
have power to tax them, and we will tax them," said one of the
ministers. In the House of Lords the bill was agreed to without debate
or dissent. The king, at the time of signing the bill, was suffering
from one of his periodic attacks of insanity; but the ratification was
accepted as valid nevertheless. Neither Franklin nor any of the other
American agents imagined the act would be forcibly resisted in America.
Even Otis had said, "We must submit." But they reckoned without their
host. The stamp act was a two-edged sword; in aiming to cut down the
liberties of America, it severed the bonds that tied her to the mother
country.

The prospect before the colonies was truly intolerable. No product of
their industry could be exported save to England; none but English
ships might enter their ports; no wool might be moved from one part of
the country to another; no Bible might be printed anywhere; all hats
must come from England; no ore might be mined or worked; duties were
imposed on almost every imported article of use or luxury. No marriage,
promissory note, or other transaction requiring documentary record was
valid except with the government stamp. In a word, convicts in a jail
could hardly be shackled more severely than were these two millions of
the most freedom-loving and intelligent people on the globe. "If this
system were to prevail," remarked Thacher of Boston, "it would
extinguish the flame of liberty all over the world."

But it was not to prevail. Patrick Henry had been elected to the
legislature of Virginia. His first act was to maintain, in committee of
the whole, that the colony had never given up its right to be governed
by its own laws respecting taxation, and that it had been constantly
recognized by England; and that any attempt to vest such power in other
persons tended to destroy British as well as American freedom. In a
passionate peroration he warned George III. to remember the fate of
other tyrants who had trampled on popular liberties. Otis in
Massachusetts suggested the novel idea of summoning a congress from all
the colonies to deliberate on the situation. In New York a writer
declared that while there was no disposition among the colonies to
break with England as long as they were permitted their full rights,
yet they would be "satisfied with no less."--"The Gospel promises
liberty and permits resistance," said Mayhew. Finally, the dauntless
and faithful Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina, after considering
Massachusett's suggestion of a union, pronounced, as head of the
committee, in its favor.

In England, meanwhile, the cause of the colonies had been somewhat
favored by the willfulness of the king, who, in order to bring his
court favorites into power, dismissed the Grenville ministry. There
were no persons of ability in the new cabinet, and vacant feebleness
was accounted better for America than resolute will to oppress. The
king himself, however, never wavered in his resolve that the colonies
should be taxed. On the other hand, the colonies were at this time
disposed to think that the king was friendly to their liberties. But
whatever misapprehensions existed on either side were soon to be
finally dispelled.

In August, 1765, the names of the stamp distributers (who were to be
citizens of the colonies) were published in America; and the packages
of stamped paper were dispatched from England. There was an old
elm-tree in Boston, standing near the corner of Essex Street, opposite
Boylston Market. On the morning of the 14th of August, two figures were
descried by early pedestrians hanging from the lower branches of the
tree. "They were dressed in square-skirted coats and small-clothes, and
as their wigs hung down over their faces, they looked like real men.
One was intended to represent the Earl of Bute, who was supposed to
have advised the king to tax America; the other was meant for the
effigy of Andrew Oliver, a gentleman belonging to one of the most
respectable families in Massachusetts, whom the king had appointed to
be the distributer of stamps." It was in vain that Hutchinson ordered
the removal of the effigies; the people had the matter in their own
hands. In the evening a great and orderly crowd marched behind a bier
bearing the figures, gave three cheers for "Liberty, Property and no
stamps," before the State House, where the governor and Hutchinson were
in session, and thence went to the house which Oliver had intended for
his stamp office, tore it down, and burned his image in the fire they
kindled with it, in front of his own residence. "Death to the man who
offers stamped paper to sell!" they shouted. "Beat an alarm!" quavered
Hutchinson to the militia colonel.--"My drummers are in the mob," was
the reply; and when Hutchinson attempted to disperse the crowd, they
forced him to run the gantlet, in the Indian fashion which was too
familiar to New Englanders, and caught him several raps as he ran. "If
Oliver had been there he'd have been murdered," said Governor Bernard,
with conviction; "if he doesn't resign--!" But Oliver, much as he loved
the perquisites of the office, loved his life more, and he resigned
before the mob could threaten him. Bernard, with chattering teeth, was
ensconced in the safest room in the castle. There remained Hutchinson,
in his handsome house in Garden Court Street, near the North Square.
Late at night the mob came surging and roaring in that direction. As
they turned into Garden Court Street, the sound of them was as if a
wild beast had broken loose and was howling for its prey. From the
window, the terrified chief-justice beheld "an immense concourse of
people, rolling onward like a tempestuous flood that had swelled beyond
its bounds and would sweep everything before it. He felt, at that
moment, that the wrath of the people was a thousand-fold more terrible
than the wrath of a king. That was a moment when an aristocrat and a
loyalist might have learned how powerless are kings, nobles, and great
men, when the low and humble range themselves against them. Had
Hutchinson understood and remembered this lesson he need not in after
years have been an exile from his native country, nor finally have laid
his bones in a distant land."

The mob broke into the house, destroyed the valuable furniture,
pictures and library, and completely gutted it. The act was denounced
and repudiated by the better class of patriots, like Adams and Mayhew;
but it served a good purpose. The voice of the infuriated mob is
sometimes the only one that tyranny can hear. One after another all the
colonies refused to accept the stamp act, and every stamp officer was
obliged to resign. Meanwhile the leaders discussed the people's rights
openly. The law was to go into effect on November 1st. "Will you
violate the law of Parliament?" was asked. "The stamp act is against
Magna Charta, and Lord Coke says an act of Parliament against Magna
Charta is for that reason void," was the reply. "Rulers are attorneys,
agents and trustees of the people," said Adams, "and if the trust is
betrayed or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke
the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute
abler and better agents. We have an indisputable right to demand our
privileges against all the power and authority on earth." Never had
there been such unanimity throughout the colonies; but in New York,
General Gage, who had betrayed lack of courage under Amherst a few
years before, but who was now commander-in-chief, declared he would put
down disaffection with a strong hand. There were ships of war in the
harbor, and the fort in the town mounted heavy guns. Major James of the
artillery was intrusted with the preparations. "I'll cram the stamps
down their throats with the end of my sword: if they attempt to rise
I'll drive them out of town for a pack of rascals, with four and twenty
men!" It was easy to pass a stamp act, and to bring stamped paper into
the colonies; but it would take more than Major James, and Governor
Golden, and General Gage himself to make the people swallow them. The
day of the "Sons of Liberty" was dawning.



CHAPTER THIRTEENTH

THE PASSING OF THE RUBICON


Issue was now joined between America and England. They faced each
other--the great, historic figure, and the stripling of a century--and
knew that the limit had been reached. The next move might be
irrevocable.

"You must submit to the tax."--"I will not submit."

Englishmen, with some few eminent exceptions, believed that England was
in the right. If the word of Parliament was not law, what was? If the
law it made could be disregarded, what could stand? A colony was a
child: children must be kept in subjection. Colonies were planted for
the benefit and extension of commerce; if they were permitted to
conduct their commerce without regard to the mother country, their
reason for existence was gone. The protection of a colony was
expensive: why should not the protected one bear a part at least of the
expense? If the mother country allowed the colony to fix the amount it
should pay, what guarantee could she have that it would pay anything?
Could mighty England assume toward little America the attitude of a
tradesman, humbly standing at the door with a bill, asking whether it
would be convenient to pay something on account? If there were to be
condescension, it should not come from America. She clamored for
justice; England would be just: but she must first be obeyed. England
might forgive the debt, but must insist upon acknowledgment that the
debt was due, and upon the right to collect it at pleasure. As for the
plea that taxation should postulate representation, it would not bear
examination. It might be true that Parliament was a theoretically
representative body; but, in fact, it was a gathering of the men in
England best qualified to govern, who were rather selected than
elected. Many of the commons held their seats by favor of the nobility;
the suffrage, as practiced, was a recognition that the people might
have a voice in the government of the country; but that voice was not
to be a deciding one. It was exercised only by a part of the people,
and even then, largely under advice or influence. Many important towns
and districts had no representatives. Americans were as well off as
these Englishmen; on what ground could they demand to be better off?
They must trust to the will of England to secure their advantage in
securing her own; to her wisdom, equity, and benevolence. Why should
they complain of the Navigation Acts? What more did they want than a
market?--and that, England afforded. Why should they feel aggrieved at
the restriction on their manufactures? England could manufacture
articles better than they could, and it was necessary to the well-being
of her manufacturing classes that they should be free from American
competition. Did they object to the measures England took to prevent
smuggling and illicit dealing?--They had only themselves to blame: was
it not notorious that evasions and open violations of the law had for
years existed? Did they object to royal governors?--What better
expedient was there to keep the two countries in touch with each
other--to maintain that "representation" in England which they
craved?--whereas, were they to choose governors from among themselves,
they would soon drift away from sympathy with and understanding of
England. And why all this uproar about the stamp tax? What easier, more
equitable way could be devised to get the financial tribute required
without pressing hard on any one? If Americans would object to that,
they would object to anything; and they must either be abandoned
entirely to their own devices--which of course was out of the
question--or they must be compelled, if they would not do it
voluntarily, to accede to it. Compulsion meant force; force meant a
resident English army; and that army must be supported and accommodated
by those for whose regulation it was established.

Such was the attitude of men like Lord Chief-justice Mansfield, who
spoke on the subject in the House of Lords. He refused to recognize any
essential distinction between external and internal taxes; though, as
Pitt pointed out, the former was designed for the regulation of trade,
and whatever profit arose from it was incidental; while the latter was
imposed to raise revenue for the home government, and was, in effect,
arbitrarily appropriating the property of subjects without their
consent asked or obtained. Pitt disposed of the argument of virtual
representation by denying it point-blank; Americans were not in the
same position with those Englishmen who were not directly represented
in Parliament; because the latter were inhabitants of the kingdom, and
could be, and were indirectly represented in a hundred ways. But while
opposing the right of Parliament to rob America, he asserted in the
strongest terms its right to govern her. "The will of Parliament,
properly signified, must forever keep the colonies dependent upon the
sovereign kingdom of Great Britain. If any idea of renouncing
allegiance has existed, it was but a momentary frenzy. In a good cause,
the force of this country can crush America to atoms. But on this
ground of the stamp act, I am one who will lift up my hands against it.
I rejoice that America has resisted. In such a cause, your success
would be hazardous. America, if she fell, would embrace the pillar of
the state, and pull down the constitution along with her."

The Lords passed the bill against a minority of five. In the Commons,
where Burke ardently spoke in favor of the tax, the majority was even
greater. "It was decided that irresponsible taxation was not a tyranny
but a vested right; that Parliament held legislative power, not as a
representative body but in absolute trust: that it was not and had
never been responsible to the people." This was the new Toryism, which
was to create a new opposition. The debate aroused a discussion of
popular rights in England itself, and the press began to advocate
genuine representation. Meanwhile, it looked ill for the colonies. But
a law which is only engrossed on parchment, and is not also founded in
natural truth and justice, has no binding power, even though it be
supported by the army and navy of England. Humanity was on the side of
America, and made her small numbers and physical weakness as strong as
all that is good and right in the world. All appearances to the
contrary notwithstanding, there is nothing real but right. Had America
fought only for herself, she would have failed.

The instances of mob violence in the colonies at this period were not
to be classed with lawless outbreaks in countries which have a
government of their own. The colonies were subjected to a government
which they did not elect or approve; and the management of their
affairs consequently reverted inevitably and rightly to the body of the
people themselves. They had no officers and no organization, but they
knew what they wanted; and having in view the slowness of
inter-communication, and the differences in the ideas and customs of
the several colonies, the unanimity of their action in the present
juncture is surprising. When their congress met in New York on the 7th
of October, 1765, their debate was less as to principles than as to the
manner of their declaration and enforcement. The watchword, "Join or
die," had been started in September, and was taken up all over the
country. Union was strength, and on union all were resolved. The mob
had put a stop to the execution of the law; it now rested with the
congress to settle in what way and on what grounds the repeal of the
law should be demanded. Against the people and the congress were
arrayed the royal governors and other officials, and the troops. The
former deluged the home government with exhortations to be firm; the
latter waited the word to act, not without misgivings; for here were
two million inhabitants, a third or fourth part of whom might bear arms.

Should the congress base its liberties on charter rights, or on natural
justice and universal reason?--On the latter, said Gadsden of South
Carolina; and the rest acceded. "I wish," Gadsden had said, "that the
charters may not ensnare us at last by drawing different colonies to
act differently in this great cause. There ought to be no New England
man, no New Yorker, known on the continent, but all Americans." It was
a great truth to be enunciated at that time. There were statesmen less
wise in this country a hundred years later. The Duke of Choiseul,
premier of France, and one of the acutest ministers that ever lived,
foresaw the independence of America, and even so early began to take
measures having in view the attitude of France in that contingency.--In
the congress, Otis advocated repeal, not of the stamp act alone, but of
all acts laying a duty on trade; and it was finally agreed to mention
the latter as grievances. Trial by jury was stipulated for instead of
admiralty jurisdiction; taxes should be imposed only by colonial
legislatures, representation in Parliament being impracticable. One or
two of the delegates feared to sign the document embodying these views
and demands; whereupon Dyer of Connecticut observed that since disunion
in these matters was fatal, the remaining delegates ought to sign them;
and this was done, only Ruggles and Ogden, of Massachusetts and of New
Jersey respectively, declining. By this act the colonies became "a
bundle of sticks which could neither be bent nor broken." At the same
time, Samuel Adams addressed a letter to Governor Bernard of
Massachusetts. "To suppose a right in Parliament to tax subjects
without their consent includes the idea of a despotic power," said he.
"The stamp act cancels the very conditions upon which our ancestors,
with toil and blood and at their sole expense, settled this country. It
tends to destroy that mutual confidence and affection, as well as that
equality, which ought to subsist among all his majesty's subjects: and
what is worst of all evils, if his majesty's subjects are not to be
governed according to the known and stated rules of the constitution,
their minds may in time become disaffected."

On the 1st of November, the day when the act was to go into effect,
Colden, governor of New York, "resolved to have the stamps
distributed." The army and navy professed themselves ready to support
him. But the population rose up in a body against it, with Isaac Sears
as leader. "If you fire on us, we'll hang you," they told Colden.
Torchlight processions, with the governor's effigy burned in a bonfire
composed of his own carriages, right under the guns of the fort in
which he had taken refuge, followed. Colden capitulated, and even gave
up the stamps into the custody of the people. Similar scenes were
enacted in the other colonies. The principle of "union and liberty"
became daily more deeply rooted. If England refused to repeal the act,
"we will repeal it ourselves," declared the colonists. John Adams said
that the colonies were already discharged from allegiance, because they
were "out of the king's protection"--protection and allegiance being
reciprocal. The Sons of Liberty became a recognized organization. The
press printed an admonition to George III., brief but pithy: GREAT SIR,
RETREAT, OR YOU ARE RUINED. Otis maintained that the king, by
mismanaging colonial affairs, had practically abdicated, so far as they
were concerned. Israel Putnam, being of an active turn, rode through
Connecticut to count noses, and reported that he could raise a force of
ten thousand men. Meanwhile the routine business of the country went on
with but slight modification, though according to the stamp act nothing
that was done without a stamp was good in law. But it appeared, upon
experiment, that if the law was in the people it could be dispensed
with on paper. And wherever you went, you found a population smilingly
clad in homespun.

Would England repeal the act? The House of Lords voted in favor of
enforcing it, February, 1766. In the Commons, General Howard declared
that if it were passed, rather than imbrue his hands in the blood of
his countrymen, he would sheathe his sword in his own body. The House
divided two to one against the repeal. The king said he was willing to
modify, but not to repeal it. On the 13th Franklin was summoned to the
bar. He showed why the colonies could not and would not pay the tax,
and that, unless it were repealed, their affection for England, and the
commerce depending thereon, would be lost. Would America pay a modified
stamp duty?--he was asked; and bravely replied, "No: never: they will
never submit to it." But could not a military force carry the act into
effect?--"They cannot force a man to take stamps who chooses to do
without them," was the answer. He added that the colonists thought it
hard that a body in which they were not represented should make a merit
of giving what was not its own but theirs. He affirmed a difference
between internal and external taxation, because the former could not be
evaded, whereas articles of consumption, on which the duty formed part
of the price, could be dispensed with at will. "But what if necessaries
of life should be taxed?" asked Grenville, thinking he had Franklin on
the hip. But the American sage crushingly replied, "I do not know a
single article imported into the colonies but what they can either do
without it, or make it for themselves."

In the final debates, Pitt, called on to say whether, should total
repeal be granted, in compliance with American menaces of resistance,
the consequence would not be the overthrow of British authority in
America, gave his voice for repeal as a right. Grenville, on the other
hand, thought that America should learn that "prayers are not to be
brought to Caesar through riot and sedition." The vote for repeal, and
against modified enforcement, was two hundred and seventy-five to one
hundred and sixty-seven. The dissenting members of the Lords signed a
protest, because, should they assent to the repeal merely because it
had passed the lower house, "we in effect vote ourselves useless." This
suggests the "Je ne vois pas la nécessité" of the French epigrammatist.
The Lords took themselves too seriously. Meanwhile, Bow bells were
rung, Pitt was cheered, and flags flew; the news was sent to America in
fast packets, and the rejoicing in the colonies was great. Prisoners
for debt were set free, there were illuminations and bonfires, and
honor was paid to Pitt, Camden, Barre, and to the king, who was eating
his heart with vexation fit having been compelled to assent to what he
called "the fatal repeal."

The British government, while repealing the law, had yet affirmed its
sovereign authority over the colonies. The colonies, on the other hand,
were inclined to confirm their present advantage and take a step still
further in advance. They would not be taxed without representation; why
should they submit to any legislation whatever without representation?
What right had England to enforce the Navigation Acts? The more the
general situation was contemplated and discussed, the plainer to all
did it appear that union was indispensable. The governors of most of
the colonies were directing a treacherous attack against the charters;
but bold students of the drift of things were foreseeing a time when
charters might be superseded by independence. Patriots everywhere were
keenly on the watch for any symptoms of a design on Parliament's part
to raise a revenue from America. The presence and quartering of English
soldiers in the colonies was regarded as not only a burden, but an
insinuation. It was moreover a constant occasion of disturbance; for
there was no love lost between the people and the soldiers. But, that
there was no disposition on the people's part to pick quarrels or to
borrow trouble, was evident from their voluntarily passing resolutions
for the reimbursement of persons, like Hutchinson, who had suffered
loss from the riots. If England would treat them like reasonable
creatures, they were more than willing to meet her half way. It is
probable that but for the royal governors, England and America might
have arrived at an amicable understanding; yet, in the ultimate
interests of both countries, it was better that the evil counselors of
the day should prevail.

Townshend, an able, eloquent, but entirely untrustworthy man, devoted
to affairs, and of insatiable though unprincipled ambition, proposed in
Parliament to formulate a plan to derive a permanent revenue from
America. This Parliament has been described by historians, and is
convicted by its record, as the most corrupt, profligate and
unscrupulous in English annals. William Pitt, who had accepted the
title of Lord Chatham, and entered the House of Lords, was nominally
the leader, but his health and failing faculties left him no real
power. Shelburne, Secretary of State, was moderate and liberal, but no
match for Townshend's brilliancy. The latter's proposal was to suspend
the legislature of New York, as a punishment for the insubordination of
the colony and a warning to others; to support a resident army, and to
pay salaries to governors, judges and other crown officers, out of the
revenue from America; to establish commissioners of the customs in the
country; to legalize general writs of assistance; to permit no
native-born American to hold office under the crown; and to make the
revenue derivable from specified taxes on imports. The tax on tea was
among those particularly mentioned. This was the scheme which was to be
substituted for the repealed stamp tax; the colonies had objected to
that as internal; this was external, and, though Townshend had refused
to admit any difference between the two, he now employed it as a means
of bringing the colonies to terms. The measure was received with
acclaim by Parliament, though it was contrary to the real sentiment of
the English nation. The king was charmed with it. Townshend died soon
after it was passed, at the age of forty-one; and the king called on
Lord North to take his place; a man of infirm will, but able,
well-informed and clear-minded, with a settled predisposition against
the cause of the people. He was as good an enemy of America as
Grenville himself, though a less ill-natured one.

But, viewing this period broadly, it is manifest that the finest brains
and best hearts, both in England and America, were friends to the cause
of liberty. America, certainly, at this critical epoch in her career,
produced a remarkable band of statesmen and patriots, perfectly fitted
to the parts they had to play. The two Adamses, Gadsden, Franklin,
Otis, Patrick Henry, Livingstone of New York, John Hancock, the wealthy
and splendid Boston merchant, Hawley of Connecticut, and Washington,
meditating upon the liberties of his country in the retirement of Mount
Vernon, and unconsciously preparing himself to lead her armies through
the Revolution--there has never been a company of better men active at
one time in any country. Just at this juncture, too, there arose in
Delaware a prophet by the name of John Dickinson, who wrote under the
title of The Farmer, and who formulated an argument against the new
revenue law which caught the attention of all the colonies. England, he
pointed out, prohibits American manufactures; she now lays duties on
importations, for the purpose of revenue only. Americans were taking
steps to establish a league to abstain from purchasing any articles
brought from England, intending thus to defeat the operation of the act
without breaking the law. This might answer in the case of luxuries, or
of things which could be made at home. But what if England were to meet
this move by laying a duty on some necessary of life, and then forbid
Americans to manufacture it at home? Obviously, they would then be
constrained to buy it, paying the duty, and thus surrendering their
freedom. From this point of view it would not be enough to evade the
tax; it must be repealed, or resisted; and resistance meant war.

Unless, however, some action of an official character were taken,
binding the colonies to co-operation, it was evident that the law would
gradually go into effect. The Massachusetts assembly, early in 1768,
sent to its London agent a letter, composed by Samuel Adams, embodying
their formal protest to the articles of the revenue act and its
corollaries. At the same time, they sent copies of the statement to the
other colonial assemblies in the country, accompanied with the
suggestion that all unite in discontinuing the use of British imported
manufactures and other articles. The crown officers, for their part,
renewed their appeal to England for naval and military forces to compel
obedience and secure order.

The king and the government inclined to think that force was the remedy
in this case. It was in vain that the more magnanimous called attention
to the fact that an army and navy could not compel a man to buy a black
broadcloth coat, if he liked a homespun one better. Inflammatory
reports from America represented it as being practically in a state of
insurrection. A Boston newspaper, which had published a severe
arraignment of Governor Bernard, was tried for libel, and the jury,
though informed by Hutchinson that if they did not convict of high
treason they "might depend on being damned," brought in a verdict of
acquittal. The Adams letter was laid before the English ministry and
pronounced to be "of a most dangerous and factious tendency," and an
injunction was dispatched to the several colonial governors to bid
their assemblies to treat it with contempt, and if they declined, to
dissolve them. Gage was ordered to enforce tranquillity. But the
colonial resistance had thus far been passive only. The assemblies now
declared that they had exclusive right to tax the people; Virginia not
only agreed to the Adams letter, but indited one even more
uncompromising; Pennsylvania and New York fell into line. A Boston
committee presented an address to Bernard asking him to mediate between
the people and England; he promised to do so, but at the same time sent
out secret requests to have regiments sent to Boston. Divining his
duplicity, John Adams, at the next town meeting, formulated the
people's resolve to vindicate their rights "at the utmost hazard of
their lives and fortunes," declaring that whosoever should solicit the
importation of troops was "an enemy to this town and province." The
determination not to rescind the principles stated in the Samuel Adams
letter of January was unanimous. Lord Mansfield thereupon declared that
the Americans must be reduced to entire obedience before their alleged
grievances could be considered. Camden confessed that he did not know
what to do; the law must be executed: but how? "If any province is to
be chastised, it should be Boston." Finally, two regiments and a
squadron were ordered to Boston from Halifax. Samuel Adams felt that
the time was now at hand either for independence or annihilation, and
he affirmed publicly that the colonists would be justified in
"destroying every British soldier whose foot should touch the shore."
In the country round Boston, thirty thousand men were ready to fight. A
meeting was called in Faneuil Hall, and it resolved that "the
inhabitants of the Town of Boston will at the utmost peril of their
lives and fortunes maintain and defend their rights, liberties,
privileges and immunities."--"And," said Otis, pointing to four hundred
muskets which had been collected, "there are your arms; when an attempt
is made against your liberties, they will be delivered." Bernard, who
was pale with alarm, had to announce that the regiments were coming,
and would be quartered, one in Castle William, the other on the town.
The council replied that there was room enough in the Castle for both,
and that, according to the law, any officer attempting to use private
houses would be cashiered. In the midst of the dispute, the regiments
arrived. The convention had, from the first, law on their side; and in
order to preserve this advantage were determined to offer only a
passive resistance to the revenue law, and to abstain from violence
until it was offered to them. No charge of high treason would stand
against any one. The anchoring of the squadron off Castle William, with
guns trained on the State House, had no effect. On the first of
October, in compliance with an order from Gage, and in the absence of
Bernard, who had fled to the country in a panic, the regiments were
landed at Long Wharf. With military music playing, fixed bayonets and
loaded guns, they marched to the Common, which was whitened by their
tents. An artillery train was also brought ashore. An attempt to
browbeat the people into providing quarters failed, and the officers
dared not seize them. At length they were obliged to rent rooms, and
some of the men were lodged in the State House, as the weather became
too cold for outdoor encampment; not a few of them deserted, and
escaped into the country. But Boston was under military rule, though
there was nothing for the soldiers to do. Sentinels were posted about
the town, and citizens were challenged as they walked their streets. On
the Sabbath Day, drums and bugles disturbed the worshipers in the
churches. Officers of the custom house and army officers met at the
British coffee house in King Street. On the south side of the State
House was a court of guard, defended by two brass cannon, and a large
number of soldiers were kept there; in front of the custom house,
further down the street, a sentinel paced his beat. Boston was
indignant, but restricted itself to ceasing all purchases of
importations, trusting thus to wear out their oppressors. Some of the
younger men, however, were becoming restive under the implied or overt
insults of the officers and soldiery, and there were occasional
quarrels which might develop into something more serious. It was at
this time that the French inhabitants of New Orleans rose and drove out
the Spanish governor, Ulloa; and Du Chatelet remarked that it was "a
good example for the English colonies." But Boston needed no example;
she afforded one in herself. All the other colonies had indorsed her
attitude; but the animosity of England was concentrated against her.
The whole kingdom was embattled against the one small town; two more
regiments had been sent there, but no rebellion could be found. Was it
the purpose to provoke one? Soldiers, from time to time, were arrested
for misdemeanors, and brought before the civil magistrates, but were
pardoned, when convicted, by the higher courts. Samuel Adams and
others, on the other hand, continued to be threatened with prosecution
for treason, but did not recede from their position. Bernard,
Hutchinson, Oliver, and the attorney-general acted as secret informers
and purveyors of evidence against the patriots. All petitions from the
colonies addressed to the English government were refused so much as a
hearing. And yet there was a strong division of opinion in Parliament
as to the course England was taking; and there were many who wished
that the question of taxation had never been raised. In 1769, it was
conceded that the duties on most specified articles should be
abolished; nevertheless, Hillsborough, Secretary for the Colonies, said
that he would "grant nothing to Americans except what they might ask
with a halter round their necks"; and the great Samuel Johnson did not
scruple to add that "they are a race of convicts, and ought to be
thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging." Against such
intemperate vaporings are to be set the noble resolutions of the
Virginia assembly, of which Jefferson, Patrick Henry and Washington
were members, extending its sympathy and support to Massachusetts,
warning King George against carrying Americans beyond seas for trial,
and advocating colonial union. This was the more admirable, because
England had treated Virginia with especial tenderness and
consideration. Similar resolutions in other colonies followed, and a
regular correspondence between the assemblies was agreed to. The folly
of English oppression had already created a united America.

At length the English government, weakened by the opposition, and by
the badness of their cause, agreed to abolish all duties except that on
tea, which was now bought cheaper in Boston than in London; and to
withdraw two at least of the regiments. But Boston was contending for a
principle, not for a few hundred pounds, and refused to accept the tea
as a compromise. Much more conducive to good feeling was the recall of
Governor Bernard, just as he was making himself comfortable for a long
tenure of office under the protection of British soldiers. This man's
character is as contemptible as any in colonial history. It was not
merely or chiefly that he was an abject miser and a foe to liberty. He
was a convicted liar, a spy, and a double-dealer; and his cowardice
made him despised even by the British. He scrupled not to swindle the
British government, by conniving at smuggling, while assuring them of
his zeal in putting it down. While smiling in men's faces, he was
covertly laying plots for their destruction. His last thought, after
receiving the crushing news of his recall, was to try to beguile the
assembly into voting him his salary for the coming year. The attempt
failed, and he retreated in disgrace, with joy-bells ringing in his
ears. His only consolation was that he left Hutchinson in his place, as
ill-disposed toward liberty and honor as himself, and his superior in
intelligence. His recall had been due to the desire of London
merchants, who believed that his presence was destructive of their
commercial interests. The ministers for whom he had incurred so much
ignominy would do nothing for him; for the dishonorable are always
ready to sacrifice their instruments.

Hutchinson immediately began the system of secret conspiracy against
the lives and liberties of the chief citizens of Boston which marked
his administration; flattering them in their presence, while writing
letters of false accusations to the English ministry, which he begged
them never to disclose. But his cowardice was equal to Bernard's; so
that when the people detected an informer, and tarred and feathered
him, he dared not order the English regiments to interfere, and no one
else was qualified to give the word. But the hatred between the
soldiers and the citizens was inflamed. A British officer told his men,
if they were "touched" by a citizen, to "run him through the body."
Many young men went armed with oaken cudgels.

Two sons of Hutchinson, worthy of their sire, were guilty of felony in
breaking a lock to get at a consignment of tea, which had been locked
up by the committee of merchants. The merchants called Hutchinson to
account; he promised to deposit the price of what tea had been sold and
to return the rest. Dalrymple, the commander, issued twelve rounds of
ammunition, with which the soldiers ostentatiously paraded the streets.
But inasmuch as no one but the governor was authorized to bid them
fire, and the citizens knew Hutchinson's timidity too well to imagine
that he would do such a thing, this only led to taunts and revilings;
and such epithets as "lobster-backs" and "damned rebels" were freely
bandied between the military and the young men. The officers made
common cause with their men, and the custom house people fomented the
bitterness. A vague plan seems to have been formed to provoke the
citizens into attacking the military, who were then to fire, and plead
self-defense.

On Friday, March 2, 1770, some soldiers came to blows with men employed
on a rope-walk. The affair was talked over in the barracks, and nothing
was done to restrain the desire of the soldiers for revenge, or to keep
them off the streets at night. On the 5th, squads of them were forging
about, armed with bludgeons, bayonets and cutlasses, boasting of their
"valor," challenging the people they met, and even striking them. Their
officers openly encouraged them. Their regiments were the Fourteenth
and the Twenty-ninth, notorious for their dissoluteness and
disorderliness. The night was cold, and a few inches of snow fell.
Other groups of soldiers came out, with their flintlocks in their
hands: a boy was struck on the head; several times the guns were
leveled, and the threat was made to fire. One youth was knocked down
with a cutlass. Knots of angry young men began to range hither and
thither with staves:--"Where are they?--Cowards!--Fire if you
dare!--Lobster-scoundrels!" The soldiers, on the other hand, were
giving way to fury, striking persons in the doors of their houses,
calling out that they would kill everybody, and shouting "Fire--fire!"
as if it were a watchword. But as yet no irrevocable act had been done.

Soon after nine o'clock, however, the alarm bell at the top of King
Street was rung hurriedly. Many persons thought it was for fire; and as
Boston had been nearly destroyed by a great fire ten years before, a
large crowd rapidly poured out into the streets. But the frosty air
carried no scent of smoke, and as the bell soon stopped its clangor, a
number returned to their homes; but the younger and more hot-headed
smelled mischief, if not smoke, and drew from various directions toward
the barracks. A party of them came down King Street toward the custom
house. They were halted by the gruff "Who goes there?" of the sentry,
and his bayonet at their breasts.

There were words of defiance: a sudden scuffle: and out of the barrack
gate came pouring the guard, with guns in their hands. Almost in the
same moment a great multitude of citizens came surging in from all
sides, and thronged in front of the custom house, where the fight
seemed to be going on. Those behind pushed against those in front, and
all became wedged in a mass, trying to see what was going forward,
swaying this way and that, uttering broken shouts, threatening,
warning, asking, replying; and hot at heart with that fierce craving to
measure strength against strength which is the characteristic of the
Anglo-Saxon when his blood is up. The soldiers were wholly in the
wrong: they had no right to be where they were; they had no right to
wantonly annoy and provoke citizens in their own town; their presence
in the colony, for the purpose of constraining a peaceful population,
was a crime; but consciousness of this fact did not lessen their
animosity. As for the Boston people, they felt, as they faced the
emissaries of their oppressors on that wintry night, the accumulated
exasperation of generations of injustice, and perhaps a stern thrill of
joy that now, at last, the final, unforgivable outrage was to be
perpetrated.

The great majority of citizens had not even sticks in their hands; none
of them carried guns or cutlasses. Some snowballs were thrown at the
soldiers, who faced the crowd with savage faces, and leveled bayonets.
Then there was a fresh crowding and uproar, for Captain Preston and a
squad of eight men had issued from the guard house and were forcing
their way to their comrades with the point of the cold steel. Their red
coats and black shakos and the glint of the moonlight on their weapons
made them conspicuous in the struggling mass, and the sinister intent
which was manifest in their look and bearing sent a strange thrill
through the multitude.

A tall man in a black cloak, who five years later was a general of
artillery in the American army, laid his hand on Preston's shoulder
forcibly. "For God's sake, sir, get back to your barracks; if you fire,
you must die for it!" exclaimed he, in a deep voice. Preston stared at
him, hardly seeming to see him, and quivering with agitation. "Stand
aside--I know what I'm about," he replied huskily. As the soldiers
reached the sentinel's post and faced about in a semicircle, the crowd
fell back, and there were voices calling "Home--home!" The soldiers
began to load, pouring the powder and ball into the muzzles of their
guns, and ramming the charge home sharply with their ramrods. At this,
a dozen men, with cudgels, advanced upon the soldiers, cheering, and
passed in front of them, striking the barrels of their muskets with
their sticks. "Cowardly rascals!--drop your guns, and we're ready for
you," said some between their gritted teeth. "Fire, lobsters!--you
daren't fire!" cried others. "Down with 'em! drive the cowards to their
barracks!" shouted some. "Are your men loaded?" demanded a citizen,
stepping up to Preston; and when the latter nodded--"Will they fire
upon the inhabitants?"--"Not without my orders," the captain seemed to
say. "Come on, you rascals--fire if you dare--you daren't fire!" yelled
the fiercer spirits, now beside themselves with passion; and one struck
a soldier's piece. He leveled it and fired, at the same moment that
Preston waved his sword and gave the word. A man fell at the shot: the
people gave back; the other soldiers fired deliberately and viciously,
not in a volley, but one after another, taking aim. Some of them
started forward to use the bayonet. It is said that a figure was seen
to come out on the balcony of the custom house, his face concealed by a
veil hanging down over it, and fire into the retreating throng. The
open space in front of the soldiers was overhung with smoke, which
slowly dissolved away, and revealed eleven New Englanders stretched
along the trodden snow of their native town. Some tried to rise; others
lay still. Blood flowed from their wounds, smoking in the icy air, and
tinging the white snow red. The deed had been done.

A sullen muttering of horror, swelling by degrees into a roar of rage,
burst from hundreds of throats as that spectacle was seen; and in a
moment, as it seemed, the town drums had beat to arms, the bells were
clanging, and all Boston was pressing tumultuously into King Street.
The Twenty-ninth regiment was hurriedly marshaled under arms; it
appeared at first as if the populace, thousands strong, and not without
weapons, would rush upon them and tear them in pieces. But by this time
the saner and stronger men had reached the scene, and set themselves
resolutely to withhold the people. "You shall have justice," they told
them, "but let it be by due course of law." And there was Hutchinson,
promising everything in his dismay, hurrying between the soldiers and
the crowd, his feet making blood-stained marks in the snow as he went.
To no man more than to him was due the guilt of that night's work.

Prompt and clean measures were taken: a town-meeting was held, and the
immediate withdrawal of all troops from Boston was required. The
wretched Hutchinson tried to temporize: he denied that he had power to
move the soldiers; then he consented to send one regiment away, letting
the other remain; the people would accept no compromise; Dalrymple said
that he would do as the governor directed. Samuel Adams and Hutchinson
finally faced each other in Faneuil Hall. "If you have power to remove
one regiment, you have power to remove both," said Adams, in a low but
distinct voice, pointing his finger at the other. "Here are three
thousand people: they are becoming very impatient: the country is in
general motion: night is approaching: an immediate answer is expected:
it is at your peril if you refuse." And describing the scene afterward,
Adams said, "at the appearance of the determined citizens, peremptorily
demanding redress of grievances, I saw his knees tremble and his face
grow pale: and I enjoyed the sight!" Truly, it was a subject for a
great artist to immortalize. The troops must go: and they went, choking
with humiliation.

The news of this affair in England shocked the more reasonable people,
and led to criticism of the ministers; but Lord North, supported by the
king, would not consent to remove the tax on tea. He made it "a test of
authority," and a punishment for "American insolence." It was an
expensive punishment for England; the cost of keeping an army in the
colonies, and other incidental expenses, footed up about half a million
dollars, against a revenue from duties of four hundred dollars only.
Americans got their tea from the Dutch by smuggling and by corrupt
connivance of the English customs officers; and the loss of the English
East India Company was estimated at two and a half million dollars at
least. There was great uneasiness at this absurd showing; and Burke
declared that "the idea of a military establishment in America is all
wrong." Lord Chatham, reading the letters from Boston patriots, and
resolutions of assemblies, remarked, "These worthy New Englanders ever
feel as Old Englanders ought to feel." The colonists, however, zealous
as they were for their liberties, were ready to meet half way any
effort toward conciliation on England's part. The agreement to accept
no British imports was but slackly kept, in spite of protests from
South Carolina and elsewhere. The people were wearied of strife and
would have welcomed any honorable means of peace. In this juncture, two
things only kept alive the spirit of independence; neither would have
sufficed apart from the other. The first was the pig-headedness of the
English government, with the king at the head of it, and men like
Thurlow, an irreconcilable foe to America, assisting; together with the
conspiracy against the colonies of the royal governors and officials,
who sent home false and exaggerated reports, all aiming to show that
martial law was the only thing that could insure order--or, in other
words, secure them their salaries and perquisites. These persons, by
continually irritating the raw place, prevented the colonists from
forgetting their injuries. In South Carolina, Governor Tryon, a
bloody-minded Irishman, went further; he took the field against the
"Regulators"--a body of citizens who had organized to counteract the
lawlessness of the internal conduct of the colony--and after a skirmish
took a number of them prisoners and hanged them out of hand; most of
the rest, to save their lives, took to the woods and, journeying
westward, came upon the lovely vales of Tennessee, which was thus
settled. Daniel Boone had already made himself at home in Kentucky. In
Virginia, where the people were disposed to loyalty, the agitation to
do away with slavery, both on practical and moral grounds, was harshly
opposed by England, and the other colonies, sympathizing with her
action, were snubbed along with her. In short, the pompous and
hide-bound Hillsborough followed everywhere the policy of alienation,
under the impression that he was maintaining English dignity.

But all this would not have sufficed to keep the colonies on their
course toward independence, had it not been for the ceaseless vigilance
and foresight of Samuel Adams in Boston, Benjamin Franklin in London,
and the small but eminent band of patriots whom they worked with.
Adams, profoundly meditating on the signs of the times and the
qualities of human nature, perceived that England would continue to
oppress, and that the longer the colonies abstained from open
resistance, the more difficult would the inevitable revolt become. He
did not hesitate, therefore, to speak in ever plainer and bolder terms
as the peril augmented. Reason was on his side, and his command of
logic and of terse and telling language enabled him to set his cause in
the most effective light. By drawing a distinction between the king and
his ministers, he opened the way to arraign the latter for their
"wickedness" in sending an "impudent mandate" to one assembly to
rescind the lawful resolution of another. The too eager Hutchinson fell
into the trap, and pointed out that it was the king, rather than the
ministry, who must be charged with impudence. But this was not to
disprove the impudence; it was simply to make the king instead of the
ministry obnoxious to the charge, and to enlighten the people as to who
their real enemy was. "The king," said Adams, "has placed us in a
position where we must either pay no tax at all, or pay it in
accordance with his good pleasure"--against the charter and the
constitution. "The liberties of our country," he went on, "are worth
defending at all hazards. Every step has been taken but one: and the
last appeal requires prudence, fortitude and unanimity. America must
herself, under God, work out her own salvation." He set resolutely to
work to put into execution his plan of a committee of correspondence,
to elicit and stimulate the patriotic views of the various colonies.
"The people must instruct their representatives to send a remonstrance
to the king, and assure him, unless their liberties are immediately
restored whole and entire, they will form an independent commonwealth,
and offer a free trade to all nations."--"It is more than time," Adams
wrote to Warren, "to be rid of both tyrants and tyranny." He prepared a
statement of rights, among which was the right to change allegiance in
case oppression became intolerable, and to rescue and preserve their
liberties sword in hand. A detailed statement of grievances was also
drawn up, to be submitted to the king; its specifications were no doubt
familiar to Jefferson, when he wrote the "Declaration" four years
later. This document was circulated throughout the colony, and was
indorsed with unexpected enthusiasm by scores of towns; many of them,
with rustic bluntness, telling their thoughts in language even stronger
than that of their model. The fishermen of Marblehead (of whom history
says not much, but whatever is said, is memorable) affirmed that they
were "incensed at the unconstitutional, unrighteous proceedings of the
ministers, detested the name of Hillsborough, and were ready to unite
for the recovery of their violated rights." In Plymouth, "ninety to one
were for fighting Great Britain." The village of Pembroke, inhabited by
descendants of the Pilgrims, said that the oppressions which existed
must and would issue in the total dissolution of the union between the
mother country and the colonies. "Death is more eligible than slavery,"
said Marlborough; and Lenox refused to "crouch, Issachar-like between
the two burdens of poverty and slavery." There was no doubt about the
sentiment of the country; and the hands of Adams and his colleagues
were immensely strengthened by the revelation.

In the spring of 1773 the next step was taken by Virginia. Young Dabney
Carr rose in the assembly and moved a system of correspondence between
all the colonies similar to that which had been established in
Massachusetts. In other words, the intercommunication of councils in
all the colonies was organized, and when these councils should meet,
the Continental Congress would exist. The response was earnest and
cordial from Georgia to Maine. Things were rapidly shaping themselves
for the end. If anything more were needed to consolidate England's
offspring against her, it was not wanting. Hutchinson, the veteran
plotter and self-seeker, who never did a generous or magnanimous act,
who stabbed men in the back, and who valued money more than country or
honor, was exposed to the contempt of all men both in America and
England, and was forced to resign his governorship in disgrace and to
fly to England, where he died a few years later. Franklin was the
immediate means of his downfall. A member of Parliament had remarked to
him in conversation that the alleged grievances of which the colonists
complained had not been inflicted by any English initiative, but were
the result of solicitation from the most respectable of the colonists
themselves, who had affirmed these measures to be essential to the
welfare of the country. Franklin lifted his eyebrows; upon which his
interlocutor produced a number of Hutchinson's secret letters to
Hillsborough. They proved a conspiracy, on the part of Hutchinson,
Oliver and others, to crush American liberty and introduce military
rule: they were treasonable in the worst sense. Franklin remarked,
after reading them, that his resentment against England's arbitrary
conduct was much abated; since it was now evident that the oppression
had been suggested and urged by Americans whom England must have
supposed represented the better class of the colonists. He sent the
letters to Boston; and "as to the writers," he wrote, "when I find them
bartering away the liberties of their native country for posts,
negotiating for salaries and pensions extorted from the people, and,
conscious of the odium these might be attended with, calling for troops
to protect and secure them in the enjoyment of them;--when I see them
exciting jealousies in the crown, and provoking it to wrath against so
great a part of its most faithful subjects; creating enmities between
the different countries of which the empire consists; occasioning a
great expense to the old country for suppressing or preventing
imaginary rebellions in the new, and to the new country for the payment
of needless gratifications to useless officers and enemies--I cannot
but doubt their sincerity even in the political principles they
profess, and deem them mere time-servers, seeking their own private
emoluments through any quantity of public mischief; betrayers of the
interest not of their native country only, but of the government they
pretend to serve, and of the whole English empire."

The letters were read in the assembly in secret session. But in the
meanwhile Hutchinson had been led into another mistake. He had denied,
in his speech to the legislature, that any line could be drawn between
the supreme authority of Parliament and the total independence of the
colonies. Either yield, then (he said), or convince me of error. The
terrible Adams asked nothing better. Accepting Hutchinson's
alternative, he answered, "If there be no such line between
Parliament's supreme authority and our total independence, then are we
either vassals of Parliament or independent. But since the parties to
the compact cannot have intended that one of them should be vassals, it
follows that our independence was intended. If, as you contend, two
independent legislatures cannot coexist in one and the same state, then
have our charters made us distinct states from England."--Thus had the
governor unwittingly pointed his opponent's spear, and, instead of
driving him to attack Parliament, been placed in the position of
implicitly questioning its authority himself.

But this was nothing compared with the revelation of his treacherous
letters. His first instinct, of course, was falsehood. "I never wrote
any letter tending to subvert the constitution," he asseverated. Being
confronted with his own sign-manual, "Their design," he cried, "is not
to subvert but to protect." But he knew he was ruined, and sent word to
his correspondents in England to burn the letters they held. The
letters were published, and distributed all over the colonies. Not a
man or woman in the country but knew Hutchinson for the dastardly
traitor he was. A petition to remove him and Oliver was sent to the
king, but he hastened to submit his resignation, with a whining
entreaty that he be not "left destitute, to be insulted and triumphed
over." And bringing false charges against Franklin, he begged to
receive the latter's office of deputy postmaster-general.

Before this matter could be settled, affairs in Boston had come to a
crisis. The East India Company had large consignments of tea ready for
shipment to the principal towns along the American coast. The latter
warned them of loss, but Lord North said "The king means to try this
question with America." It was seen that the connection between England
and her colonies could be continued only on a basis of equal liberties,
and "Resist all shipments of tea!" was the word. New York and
Philadelphia settled the matter by commanding all consignees to resign,
which they did; but this was not to be the solution in Boston. When, on
November 28th, the "Dartmouth," Captain Rotch, arrived with one hundred
and fourteen cases of tea, the representatives of the people ordered
him not to enter till Tuesday, the 30th. Four weeks before a meeting at
Liberty Tree had been summoned, and the consignees directed to attend
and resign. The meeting was held, but Clarke and the other consignees
had refused to recognize its authority. They now temporized, and were
granted a day to consider; meanwhile a guard was kept on the ship. The
next day the consignees proposed to suspend action until they could
write to the exporters for advice; but this was seen to be a subterfuge
and was indignantly refused. Rotch agreed to take the tea back; but the
custom house refused him a clearance. For if the ship remained in port,
with her cargo undischarged, twenty days, the authorities could seize
and land it by law. If then the people were to prevail, they must do so
within that time. It seemed as if they must be defeated; for if the
consignees would not resign, and the ship could not get a clearance,
nothing but a direct violation of the law could prevent the tea from
being landed. To make assurance surer, two frigates kept guard at the
mouth of the harbor, and the guns of the Castle were loaded. The
governor and the officers were already chuckling over their anticipated
victory.

Adams and the committee of correspondence met, in secret session, and
what they determined never has transpired and can be surmised by
inference only. On Thursday, December 16th, a great meeting was called
in the Old South Church. Thousands of people from surrounding towns
were in attendance; the willingness and eagerness of them all to resist
at the cost of their lives and fortunes had been abundantly expressed.
Had there been an armed force with which they could have fought, the
way would have been easy; but there was nothing palpable here: only
that intangible Law, which they had never yet broken, and their uniform
loyalty to which, in their disputes with England, had given them
strength and advantage. Must they defy it now, in the cause of liberty,
and engage in a scuffle with the king's officers, in which the latter
would be technically at least in the right? No doubt they might
prevail: but would not the moral defeat counterbalance the gain?

"Throw it overboard!" Young had exclaimed, at a meeting two weeks
before. The suggestion had seemed to pass unheeded; but this was a
crisis when every proposition must be considered. Josiah Quincy and
other speakers set clearly before the multitude the dilemma in which
they stood. Rotch had been dispatched to Milton, where the governor had
taken refuge, to ask for a pass out of the harbor, this being the last
resort after the refusal of clearance papers. The short winter day drew
to a close; darkness fell, and the church, filled with that great
throng of resolute New Englanders, was lighted only by a few wax
candles, whose dim flare flickered on the stern and anxious
countenances that packed the pews and crowded the aisles, and upon
Adams, Young, Quincy, Hancock, and the other leaders, grouped round the
pulpit. They were in the house of God: would He provide help for His
people? A few hours more, and the cargo in yonder ship would lapse into
the hands of the British admiral. The meeting had given its final,
unanimous vote that the cargo never should be landed; but what measures
were to be taken to prevent it, was known to but few.

It was near six when a commotion at the door resolved itself into the
ushering-in of Rotch, panting from his ten-mile ride in the frosty air;
he made his way up the aisle, and delivered his report: the governor
had refused the pass. No other reply had been looked for; but at the
news a silence fell upon the grim assembly, which felt that it was now
face to face with the sinister power of the king. Then of a sudden,
loud shouts came from the lower part of the church, near the open door;
and even as Adams rose to his feet and throwing up his arm, called out,
"This meeting can do nothing more to save the country"--there was heard
from without the shrill, reduplicating yell of the Indian war whoop;
and dusky figures were seen to pass, their faces grisly with streaks of
black and red, feathers tossing in their hair, and blankets gathered
round their shoulders; each, as he passed through the dim light-ray,
swung his hatchet, uttered his war-cry, and was swallowed up in
darkness again. Out poured the multitude from the church, startled,
excited, mystified, obscurely feeling that some decisive act was about
to be done: and here are Adams and Hancock among them, cheering on that
strange procession which passed down toward the wharfs swiftly, two by
two, and seeming to increase in numbers as they passed. After them
streamed the people, murmuring and questioning, through the winter
gloom of the narrow street, until the high-shouldered houses fell away,
and there were the wide reaches of the harbor, with the ships lying at
Griffin's Wharf amid the cakes of ice that swung up and down with the
movement of the tide. As they came there, a strange silence fell upon
all, amid which the Indians--were they Indians?--swung themselves
lightly aboard the vessels, and went swiftly and silently to work. Up
from the hold came case after case of tea, which were seized and broken
open by the hatchets, the sound of their breaking being clearly audible
in the tense stillness; and the black contents were showered into the
waters. Minute after minute, hour after hour went by, and still the
wild figures worked, and still the multitude looked on, forgetful of
the cold, their hearts beating higher and fuller with exultation as
they saw the hated cargo disappear. It was all but ten of the clock
before the last hatchet-stroke that smote the king's fetters from
Massachusetts had been delivered; and then the feathered and painted
figures leaped ashore, drawing their blankets round their faces, and
melted silently into the crowd, and were lost, never again to reappear.
Who were they?--Never was secret better kept; after six score years we
know as little as did King George's officers on that night. They seemed
to have sprung into existence solely to do that one bold deed, and then
to vanish like a dream. But the deed was no dream; nor its sequel. No
blood was shed on the night of the 16th of December, 1773: but
Massachusetts, and through her the other colonies, then and there gave
notice to King George that he had passed the limits which they had
appointed for his tyranny; and the next argument must be held at the
musket's mouth.



CHAPTER FOURTEENTH

THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD


Franklin was sixty-seven years of age at this time; no man was then
alive more worthy than he of honor and veneration. For twenty years he
had guarded the interests of America in England; and while he had been
unswerving in his wise solicitude for the colonies, he had ever been
heedful to avoid all needless offense to England. The best men there
were the men who held Franklin in highest esteem as a politician, a
philosopher, and a man; and in France he was regarded as a superior
being. No other man could have filled his place as agent of the
colonies: no other had his sagacity, his experience, his wisdom, his
address. He was not of that class of diplomatists who surround every
subject they handle with a tissue of illusion or falsehood; Franklin
was always honest and undisguised in his transactions; so that what was
long afterward said of a lesser man was true of him: "Whatever record
spring to light, he never will be shamed." No service rendered by him
to his country was more useful than the exposure of Hutchinson; none
was more incumbent on him, as protector of colonial affairs. But in the
rage which possessed the English ministry upon learning how
Massachusetts had parried the attack made upon her liberties, some
immediate victim was indispensable; and as Franklin was there present,
they fell upon him. A fluent and foul-mouthed young barrister,
Alexander Wedderburn by name, had by corrupt influence secured the post
of solicitor-general; and he made use of the occasion of Franklin's
submitting the petition for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver, to
make a personal attack upon him, which was half falsehood and half
ribaldry. He pretended that the Hutchinson letters had been
dishonorably acquired, and that their publication was an outrage on
private ownership. Incidentally, he painted Hutchinson as a true
patriot and savior of his country; and called Franklin an incendiary, a
traitor, a hypocrite, who should find a fitting termination of his
career on the gallows. This billingsgate was heaped upon him before an
unusually full meeting of the lords of the privy council, the highest
court of appeal; and they laughed and cheered, while the venerable
envoy of the colonies stood "conspicuously erect," facing them with a
steady countenance. Such, and of such temper, were the aristocratic
rulers of England and of America (if she would be ruled) at this epoch.

America's friends in England were still stanch; but the ministry found
no difficulty in giving events a color which irritated the English
people at large against the colonies, and against Boston in particular;
and they had little trouble in securing the passage of the Boston Port
Bill, the effect of which was to close the largest and busiest port in
the colonies against all commerce whatsoever. Fuller said that it could
not be put in execution but by a military force; to which Lord North
answered, "I shall not hesitate to enforce a due obedience to the laws
of this country." Another added, "You will never meet with proper
obedience until you have destroyed that nest of locusts." Lord George
Germain, speaking of revoking the Massachusetts charter, said, "Whoever
wishes to preserve such charters, I wish him no worse than to govern
such subjects." The act passed both houses without a division, and Gage
was appointed military governor, in place of Hutchinson, who was
recalled; and four regiments were quartered in Boston. The wharfs were
empty and deserted; the streets were dull, the shops were closed; but
the British Coffee House in King Street was gay once more; and King
George in London, felt that he was having his revenge, though he was
paying a round price for it. But Boston, having shown that she could do
without tea, and without commerce, was now about to show that she could
also do without George.

Nobody but Americans could govern America. The people were too
intelligent, too active, too various-minded, too full of native quality
and genius to be ruled from abroad. If they were to fall under foreign
subjection, they would become a dead weight in the world, instead of a
source of life; as Adams said, every increase in population would be
but an increase of slaves. And that they preferred death to slavery was
every day becoming increasingly manifest. They felt that the future was
in them, and that they must have space and freedom to bring it forth;
and it is one of the paradoxes of history that England, to whom they
stood in blood-relationship, from whom they derived the instinct for
liberty, should have attempted to reduce them to the most absolute
bondage anywhere known, except in the colonies of Spain. She was
actuated partly by the pride of authority, centered in George III., and
from him percolating into his creatures in the ministry and Parliament;
and partly by the horde of office-seekers and holders whose aim was
sheer pecuniary gain at any cost of honor and principle. The mercantile
class had borne their share in oppression at first; but when it became
evident that tyranny applied to America would kill her productiveness,
the merchants were no longer on the side of the tyrants. It was then
too late to change the policy of the country, however; George would
have his way to the bitter end; the blind lust to thrash the colonies
into abject submission had the upper hand in England; reason could not
get a hearing; and such criticisms as the opposition could offer served
only to make still more rigid and medieval the determination of the
king.

It was the policy of the English government to regard Boston as the
head-center of revolt, and to concentrate all severities against her.
It was thought that in this way she could be isolated from the other
colonies, who would say to themselves that her troubles were none of
their affair, and that so long as they were treated with decency they
would not antagonize all-powerful England. Arguing from the average
selfishness of human nature, this policy did not seem unwise; but the
fact was that in this case human nature manifested an exceptional
generosity and enlightenment. Although the colonies, being on the
coast, must depend largely for their prosperity on commerce, and
commerce is notoriously self-seeking, nevertheless all the American
settlements without exception made the cause of Boston their own, sent
her supplies to tide over her evil days, and passed resolutions looking
to union and common action against oppression. South Carolina had every
selfish ground for siding with England; her internal affairs were in a
prosperous condition, and her traffic with England was profitable, and
not likely to be interfered with; yet none of the colonies was more
outspoken and thoroughgoing than she in denouncing England's action and
befriending Boston. The great commonwealth of Virginia was not less
altruistic in her conduct, and did more than any of her sister
provinces to enforce the doctrine of union and independence. New York,
a colony in which aristocracy held a dominant place, owing to the
tenure of large estates by the patroons, and which necessarily was a
commercial center, yet spoke with no uncertain voice, in spite of the
fact that there were there two parties, representing the lower and the
upper social class, whose differences were marked, and later led to the
formation of two political parties throughout the colonies. In
Pennsylvania, the combination of non-fighting Quakers and careful
traders deadened energy in the cause, and the preachings of Dickinson,
the venerable "Farmer," were interpreted as favoring a policy of
conciliation; but this hesitation was only temporary. The new-made city
of Baltimore was conspicuous in patriotism; and the lesser colonies,
and many out-of-the-way hamlets and villages, were magnificent in their
devotion and liberality. The demand for a congress was general, and
Boston was made to feel that her sacrifices were understood and
appreciated. She had but to pay for the tea which had been thrown
overboard, and her port would have been reopened and her business
restored; but she staked her existence upon a principle and did not
weaken. There were, in all parts of the colonies, a strong minority of
loyalists, as they called themselves, traitors, as they were termed by
extremists on the other side, or tories, as they came to be known later
on, who did and said what they could to induce submission to England,
with all which that implied. But the practical assistance they were
able to give to England was never considerable, and, on the other hand,
they sharpened the senses of the patriots and kept them from slackening
their efforts or modifying their views.

Gage, a weak and irresolute man, as well as a stupid one, was making a
great bluster in Boston. His powers were despotic. Soldiers and
frigates were his in abundance; he talked about arresting the patriots
for treason, to be tried in England; and Parliament had passed an act
relieving him and his men from all responsibility for killings or other
outrages done upon the colonists. He transferred the legislature from
Boston to Salem; and urged in season and out of season the doctrine
that resistance to England was hopeless. Upon the whole, his threats
were more terrible than his deeds, though these were bad enough.
Meanwhile Hutchinson in England had been encouraging and at the same
time misleading the king, by assurances that the colonies would not
unite, and that Boston must succumb. At the same time, Washington was
declaring that nothing was to be expected from petitioning, and that he
was ready to raise a thousand men and subsist them at his own expense,
and march at their head for the relief of Boston; Thomson Mason was
saying that he did not wish to survive the liberties of his country a
single moment; Prescott of New Hampshire was affirming that "a glorious
death in defense of our liberties is better than a short and infamous
life"; Israel Putnam of Connecticut announced himself ready to treat
the army and navy of England as enemies; and thousands of citizens in
Massachusetts were compelling royal councilors to resign their places,
and answering those who threatened them with the charge of treason and
death with--"No consequences are so dreadful to a free people as that
of being made slaves." Jay's suggestion to form a union under the
auspices of the king was disapproved: "We must stand undisguised on one
side or the other." Gage's orders were ignored; judges appointed by
royal decree were forced to retire; and "if British troops should march
to Worcester, they would be opposed by at least twenty thousand men
from Hampshire County and Connecticut." Gage, finding himself
confronted by a population, could think of no remedy but more troops.
He wrote to England that "the people are numerous, waked up to a fury,
and not a Boston rabble, but the freeholders of the county. A check
would be fatal, and the first stroke will decide a great deal. We
should therefore be strong before anything decisive is urged." He had,
on the 1st of September, 1774, captured two hundred and fifty
half-barrels of provincial powder, stored at Quarry Hill, near Medford.
Forty thousand militia, from various parts of the country, took up arms
and prepared to march on Boston; and though word was sent to them that
the time had not yet come, their rising was an object lesson to those
who had been asserting that the colonies would submit. Gage had ten
regiments at his disposal, but was trying to raise a force of Canadians
and Indians in addition, and was asking for still more re-enforcements
from England. The employment of Indians was a new thing in English
policy, and was a needless barbarism which can never be excused or
palliated. Gage fortified Boston Neck, thus putting all within the
lines at the mercy of his army; yet the starving carpenters of the town
refused to erect barracks for the British troops. Outside of Boston,
the towns threw off the English yoke. Hawley said he would resist the
whole power of England with the forces of the four New England colonies
alone; and every man between sixteen and seventy years of age was
enrolled under the name of "minute-men," ready to march and fight at a
minute's warning.

On the 5th of September, the first American Congress met in
Philadelphia. Almost all the eminent men of the country were
present--Gadsden of South Carolina, Washington, Dickinson, Patrick
Henry, Lee, the Adamses, and many more. They agreed to vote by
colonies. Their business was to consider a constitution, to protest
against the regulating act in force at Boston, which left no liberty to
the citizens; to frame a declaration of rights, and to make a statement
to the king of their attitude and demands. The session was long, for
the delegates had to make one another's acquaintance, and to discover a
middle course between what was desired by separate colonies and what
was agreeable to all. Great differences of opinion and policy were
developed, and there were not wanting men like Galloway, the Speaker,
who aimed at paralyzing all resistance to England. But the longer they
debated and voted, the more clearly and unanimously did they oppose the
tyrannous acts of Parliament and the extension of the royal
prerogative, and the more firmly did they demand liberty and equality.
Separation they did not demand, but a free union with the mother
country, to the mutual enrichment and advantage of both. By a
concession, they admitted the right of Parliament to lay external
duties and to regulate trade; but they strongly indorsed the resistance
of Massachusetts, and declared that if her oppression were persisted
in, it would be the duty of all America to come to her aid. With the
hope of influencing the merchants of England to reflect upon the
injustice of the present trade restrictions, they voted to cease all
imports into England, and to refuse all exports therefrom, though the
loss and inconvenience to themselves from this resolve must be
immeasurably greater than to the older country, which had other sources
of supply and markets for goods. In all that they did, they were ruled
by the consideration that they possessed no power of enforcing their
decrees upon their own fellow-countrymen, and must therefore so frame
them that the natural instinct for right and justice should induce to
obedience to them. Their moderation, their desire for conciliation, was
marked throughout; and when a message was received from Boston,
reciting the iniquitous proceedings of Gage, and proposing, if the
Congress agreed, that the citizens of the wealthiest community in the
new world should abandon their homes and possessions and retire to a
life of log huts and cornfields in the wilderness--when this heroic
suggestion was made, the Congress resisted the fiery counsel of Gadsden
to march forthwith on Boston and drive Gage and his army into the sea;
and bade the people of Boston to be patient yet a while, and await the
issue of the message to England. But although they were conscientious
in adopting every measure that could honorably be employed to induce
England to reconsider her behavior, they had little hope of a favorable
issue. "After all, we must fight," said Hawley; and Washington, when he
heard it, raised his hand, and called God to witness as he cried out,
"I am of that man's mind!"

Their final utterance to England was noble and full of dignity. "To
your justice we appeal. You have been told that we are impatient of
government and desirous of independence. These are calumnies. Permit us
to be as free as yourselves, and we shall ever esteem a union with you
to be our greatest glory and our greatest happiness. But if you are
determined that your ministers shall wantonly sport with the rights of
mankind: if neither the voice of justice, the dictates of law, the
principles of the constitution, or the suggestions of humanity, can
restrain your hands from shedding human blood in such an impious cause,
we must then tell you that we will never submit to be hewers of wood
and drawers of water for any ministry or nation in the world."

In order to cripple America, the new province of Quebec was enlarged,
so as to cut off the western extension of several of the older
colonies. At the same time discrimination against the Catholics was
relaxed, and the Canadians were given to understand that they would be
treated with favor. The Americans, however, were not blind to the value
of Canadian friendship, and sent emissaries among them to secure their
good will. "If you throw in your lot with us," they were told, "you
will have been conquered into liberty." In Virginia, Lord Dunmore had
been appointed governor, and in order to gratify his passion for
wealth, he broke the injunction of the king, and allowed the extension
of the province westward; but this was the result of his personal
greed, and did not prevent his hostility to all plans for colonial
liberty. Nevertheless, his conduct gained him temporary popularity in
Virginia; and still more did his management of the war against the
Shawnees, brought on by their attacks upon the frontiersmen who had
pushed their little settlements as far as the Mississippi. These
backwoodsmen were always on the borders of peril, and aided in
hastening the spread of population westward.

The proceedings of the American Congress produced a sensation in
England; they were more moderate in tone and able in quality than had
been anticipated. They could not divert the king from his purpose, but
they aroused sympathy in England among the People, and from Lord
Chatham the remark that the annals of Greece and Rome yielded nothing
so lofty and just in sentiment as their remonstrance. The
non-representative character of Parliament at this juncture is
illustrated by the fact that three-fourths of the English population
were estimated to be opposed to the war with America. It was also
pointed out that it would be difficult to find men to fill the
regiments, inasmuch as all the ablebodied men in England were needed to
carry on the industries of the country; there were no general officers
of reputation, and many of those holding commissions were mere boys, or
incompetent for service. There were three million people in America,
and they would be fighting for their own homes, and amid them, with the
whole vastness of the continent to retire into. On the other hand, it
was asserted that the Americans were all cowards, and incapable of
discipline; that five thousand English soldiers were more than a match
for fifty thousand provincials. They had no navy, no army, no forts, no
organization. They would collapse at the first real threat of force.
The English ministry and their followers vied with one another in
heaping contempt and abuse upon the colonists. It was in reply to them
that Burke made one of his greatest speeches. Burke was an artist in
sentiments, and cannot be regarded as a statesman of settled and
profound convictions; his voice regarding America had not been
consistent or wise; but ever and anon he threw forth some worthy and
noble thought. "I do not know the method," he said in his speech, "of
drawing up an indictment against a whole people." Franklin, in March,
after listening to one of Lord Sandwich's shallow and frothy
vilifications of America, "turned on his heel" and left England. With
him vanished the last hope of reconciliation. "Had I been in power,"
exclaimed Hutchinson, "I would not have suffered him to embark."

The colonists everywhere were collecting arms and ammunition, storing
powder, and diligently drilling. Whatever the leaders might say, or
refrain from saying, the mass of the people believed in the immediate
probability of war with England. In every village you could see the
farmers shouldering arms and marching to and fro on the green, while an
old man played the fife and a boy beat the drum. They did not concern
themselves about "regimentals" or any of the pomp and glory of battle;
but they knew how to cast bullets, and how to shoot them into the
bull's-eye. In their homespun small-clothes, home-knit stockings,
home-made shirts and cowhide shoes, they could march to the cannon's
mouth as well as in the finest scarlet broadcloth and gold epaulets.
Their intelligence, their good cause, their sore extremity, made them
learn to be soldiers more quickly than seemed possible to English
officers who knew the sturdy stupidity of the English peasant of whom
the British regiments were composed. And while the Yankees (as they
began to be called) were learning how to march and countermarch, and do
whatever else the system of the British regulars called for, they also
knew, by inheritance, if not by actual experience, the tactics of the
Indians; they could make a fortress of a rock or a tree or a rail
fence, and could shoot and vanish, or fall, as it seemed, from the
empty air into the midst of the unsuspecting foe. They were effective
not only in bodies, but individually; and in the heart of each, as he
faced the foe, would be not only the resolve to conquer, but the holy
thought of wife and children, and of liberty. They were as fit to be
led by Washington as was he to lead them. Professing to despise them,
Gage nevertheless protested against taking the field with less than
twenty thousand men; upon which David Hume scornfully observed, "If
fifty thousand men and twenty millions of money were intrusted to such
a lukewarm coward, they never could produce any effect." It was
resolved to supersede him.

The men of Portsmouth had seized a quantity of powder and arms, which
belonged to them, but had been sequestered in the fort. The British, as
a set-off, marched to Salem to capture some stores there; they did not
find them, and proceeded toward Danvers. A river, spanned by a
drawbridge, intervened, and when they arrived, the draw was up. There
stood Colonel Timothy Pickering, with forty provincials, asking what
Captain Leslie with his two hundred red-coated regulars wanted. The
captain blustered and threatened; but the draw remained up, and the
provincials all had guns in their hands, and looked able and willing to
use them, if occasion demanded. But the captain did not think it best
to give the signal for combat, and meanwhile time was passing, and no
soothsayer was needed to reveal that the stores were being removed to a
place of safety. After an hour or so, Colonel Pickering relented so far
as to permit the captain and his regulars to cross the bridge and
advance thirty yards beyond it; after which he must face about and
return to Boston. This he did; and thus ended the first collision
between the colonies and England. Nobody was hurt; but in less than two
months blood was to be shed on both sides. "The two characteristics of
this people, religion and humanity, are strongly marked in all their
proceedings," John Adams had said. "Resistance by arms against
usurpation and lawless violence is not rebellion by the law of God or
the land. If there is no possible medium between absolute independence
and subjection to the authority of Parliament, all North America are
convinced of their independence, and determined to defend it at all
hazards." The British answer to utterances like these was to seize a
farmer from the country, who had come to town to buy a firelock, tar
and feather him, stick a placard on his back, "American liberty, or a
specimen of democracy," and conduct him through the streets amid a mob
of soldiers and officers, to the strains of "Yankee Doodle."

As the last moments before the irrevocable outbreak passed away, there
was both a strong yearning for peace, and a stern perception that peace
must be impossible. "If Americans would be free, they must fight," said
Patrick Henry in Virginia. One after another, with singular unanimity,
the colonies fell in with this view. New York was regarded by the
British as most likely to be loyal; New England, and especially
Massachusetts, were expected to be the scene of the first hostilities.
Sir William Howe, brother of the Howe who died bravely in the Old
French War, was appointed commander-in-chief in place of Gage. The
latter was directed to adopt the most rigorous and summary measures
toward the Boston people, whose congress was pronounced by Thurlow and
Wedderburn to be a treasonable body, deserving of condign punishment.
Orders were given to raise regiments of French Papists in Canada; and
the signal that should let loose the red men for their work of
tomahawking women and children was in suspense. It was now the middle
of April.

The winter season had been exceptionally mild. In the country
neighboring Boston the leaves were budding a month earlier than usual,
and the grass was deep and green as in English meadows. The delicate
and fragrant blossoms of the mayflower made the wooded hillsides sweet,
and birds were singing and building their nests in the mild breezes,
under the cloud-flecked sky. The farmers were sowing their fields and
caring for their cattle; their wives were feeding their poultry and
milking their cows; New England seemed to have put off her sternness,
and to be wearing her most inviting and peaceful aspect. Innocence and
love breathed in the air and murmured in the woods, and warbled in the
liquid flowing of the brooks. In such a time and place, Adam and Eve
might have begun the life of humanity on earth, and found in the
loveliness and beauty of the world a fitting image of the tranquillity
and tenderness that overflowed their guileless hearts.

But Eden was far away from New England in the spring of 1775.
Committees of Safety had been formed in all the towns, whose duty it
was to provide for defense against what might happen; and two eminent
leaders, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, had been to Lexington and
Concord to oversee the dispositions, and to consult with the fathers of
the colony who had met in the latter town. A small quantity of powder
and some guns and muskets had been stored in both these places; for if
trouble should occur with the British, it was most likely to begin in
Boston, and the minute-men of the province would rendezvous most
conveniently at these outlying settlements, which lay along the high
road at distances of fourteen and twenty miles from the city. No
offensive operations, of course, were contemplated, nor was it known
what form British aggression would assume. Defense of their homes and
liberties was all that the New England farmers and mechanics intended.
They had no plan of campaign, and no military leaders who knew anything
of the art of war. They could be killed by invaders, and perhaps kill
some of them; they were sure of the holiness of their cause; but they
were too simple and homely-minded to realize that God had intrusted to
them the first irrevocable step in a movement which should change the
destinies of the world.

In Boston, during the 18th of April, there had been bustle and
mysterious conferences among the British officers, and movements among
the troops; which might mean anything or nothing. But there were
patriots on the watch, and it was surmised that some hostile act might
be meditated; and plans were made to give warning inland, should this
prove to be the case. At the British Coffee House, that afternoon, the
group of officers was gayer than usual, and there was much laughter and
many toasts. "Here's to the Yankee minute-men!" said one: "the men
who'll run the minute they see the enemy!" General Gage stalked about,
solemn, important and monosyllabic. Lieutenant-colonel Smith was very
busy, and held himself unusually erect; and Major Pitcairn, of the
marines, was often seen in his company, as if the two had some secret
in common. The plain citizens who walked the streets fancied that they
were shouldered aside even more arrogantly than usual by the haughty
redcoats; and that the insolent stare with which they afflicted the
handsome wives and pretty maidens of Boston was grosser and more
significant than common. But the evening fell with matters much as
ordinary, to all appearance; and as the town was under martial law,
most of the population was off the streets by nine o'clock.

But soon after ten that night, a man was riding at a hand-gallop past
Medford, heading west. He had been rowed across Charles River just at
the beginning of flood tide, and had landed on the Charlestown shore a
few minutes before the order to let none pass had reached the sentry.
Turning, with one foot in the stirrup, he had seen two lights from the
North Church tower, and a moment afterward had been on his way. Half a
mile beyond Charlestown Neck he had almost galloped into the arms of
two British officers, but had avoided them by turning suddenly to the
right. Now the old Boston road was smooth before him, and he threw off
his three-cornered hat, bent forward in his saddle and spoke in his
horse's ear. His was a good horse, and carried an important message. A
house near the roadside showed up dark and silent against the starlit
sky; the horseman rode to the door and struck the panels with his whip.
A window was thrown open above: "Who's there?"--"Paul Revere: the
British march to-night to Lexington and Concord: Warren, of the
Committee of Safety, bids you hold your men in
readiness."--"Right!"--The horseman turns, and is off along the road
again before the captain of the Medford minute-men has shut the window.

It is but a short fourteen miles to Lexington; but there are a dozen or
twenty farmhouses along the way, and at each of them the horseman must
pause and deliver his message; so that it is just midnight as he comes
in sight of the outskirts of the humble village. There is a dim light
burning in the window of yonder hip-roofed cottage beside the green;
Adams and Hancock must be anticipating news; Adams, indeed, has the
name of being a man who sleeps little and thinks much. The
night-rider's summons is responded to at once; and then, at the open
door, there is a brief conference, terse and to the point; the pale
face of a woman looks from the window; a message has brought Dawes and
Sam Prescott, ready mounted, to accompany Revere on his further
journey. Young Jonas Parker, the best wrestler in Lexington, has drawn
a bucket of water at the well-sweep and is holding it under the nose of
Revere's horse. "Well, my lad," says Paul, "are you ready to fight
to-morrow?"--"I won't run--I promise you that," replies the youth, with
a smile. He was dead five hours later, with a bullet through his
vigorous young body, and a British bayonet wound in his breast, having
kept his word.

Meanwhile the three horsemen are off, bearing now toward the left, for
Lincoln; but there, as luck would have it, they encountered half a
dozen English officers, who arrested Dawes and Revere and took them
back to Lexington. Prescott, however, was too quick for them; in the
flurry and darkness he had leaped his horse over the low stone wall,
and was off across the meadows which he had known from a boy, to
Concord. It was then between one and two o'clock; and the latter hour
had hardly struck when the ride was over, and the bells of the
meeting-house were pealing from the steeple. Two-o'clock-in-the-morning
courage is the test of a man, as Napoleon said some years later; be
that as it may, here are the Concord minute-men, Hosmer, Buttrick,
Parson Emerson, Brown, Blanchard, and the rest; they are running toward
the green, musket in hand, bullet-pouch on thigh, ten, twenty, fifty, a
hundred and more; and there comes Barrett, their captain, with his
sword; the men range out in a double rank, in the cool night air, and
answer to their names; if the time has indeed come for action, they are
ready to make good the bold words spoken at many a town meeting and
private chat for weeks past. They have been comrades all their lives,
and know each other; and yet now, perhaps, they gaze at one another
curiously, conscious of an indefinable change that has come over them,
now that death may be marching a few miles to the eastward.

And in truth, while they were discussing what might happen, death was
already at work at Lexington. Eight hundred grenadiers and light
infantry, the best soldiers in America, had marched into the village
shortly before dawn. For an hour or more, as they marched, they had
heard the sound of bells and of muskets, now near, now far, telling
that their movement had been discovered; and they hastened their steps;
not as apprehending resistance from the Yankee cowards, but lest the
stores they were after should be hidden before they could get at them.
And now, here they were, advancing with the regular tramp of
disciplined troops, muskets on their shoulders, bayonets fixed, and a
slight dust rising from their serried footsteps. They looked as if they
might march through a stone wall. But could it really be true that
these men meant to kill American farmers in sight of their own homes?
Were English soldiers really enemies of their own flesh and blood? As
they approached the common--an irregular triangle of ground, with a
meeting-house at the further end--the alarm-drum was beating, and
muskets firing; and yonder are the minute-men sure enough, running
together in the morning dusk, and marshaling themselves in scanty ranks
under the orders of Captain Parker. Young men and old are there, in
their well-worn shirts and breeches, cut and stitched by the faithful
hands of their wives and daughters, and each with his loaded flint-lock
in his hands. There are but fifty or sixty in all, against sixteen
times as many of the flower of the British army. The vanguard of the
latter has halted, and has received the order from Pitcairn to load;
and you may hear the ring of the ramrods in unison, and then the click
of the locks. And yonder comes the rest of the host, at double-quick,
the hoarse commands of their officers sounding out of the gloom. What
can less than threescore minute-men do against them? At all events,
they can die; and history will never forget them, standing there in
front of the little church where they had so often prayed; and their
country will always honor their names and love them. They stood there,
silent and motionless, protesting with their lives against the march of
tyranny. How few they were--and what countless millions they
represented!

Out rides Pitcairn in front of the grenadiers. You can see the red of
his tunic now in the gathering light, the sparkle of his accouterments,
and the gleam of his sword as he swings it with a commanding gesture.
"Disperse, ye villains!" he calls out in a harsh, peremptory voice: "Ye
rebels--why don't you lay down your arms and disperse?"

Would they obey?--No: for they were neither villains nor rebels; they
had come there as a sacrifice, and they would not go thence until the
crime had been committed, and their country had definitely learned,
from them, whether oppression would proceed to the last extremity, or
not. It was only a few harmless, heroic lives to lose; but so much must
needs be done. It was not an easy thing to do; there was no one to
teach them how to do it scenically and splendidly. They must simply
stand there, in their own awkward way, shoulder to shoulder,
motionless, gazing at the gallant major and the heavy masses of
uniformed men beyond, waiting for what might come. The Lord of Hosts
was on their side; but, as with our Saviour in the Garden of
Gethsemane, He seemed remotest when most near. Their wives and children
are there, looking on, straining their eyes through the obscurity, with
what throbbings of agony in their hearts, with what prayers choking in
their throats!

The major snatches a pistol from his holster, levels and discharges it;
and "Fire!" he shouts at the same moment, at the top of his lungs. He
had omitted the "Ready--present!" and the soldiers did not all fire at
once; first there were a few dropping shots; but then came the volley.
The regulars shot to kill. Down came Jonas Parker to his knee, to be
stabbed to death before he could reload; there fell old Munroe, the
veteran of Louisburg; and Harrington, killed at his doorstep, and
Muzzey, Hadley, and Brown. In all, before the stars had faded in the
light of dawn, sixteen New Englanders lay dead or wounded on the
village green. And the British troops had reformed, and huzzaed thrice,
and marched on with drum and fife, before the sun of the 19th of April
had looked upon their work. The Revolution had begun.

It was seven o'clock when, with the sun on their backs, the British
invaders came along the base of the low hill, crowned with pine and
birch, that lies like a sleeping serpent to the east on the way to
Concord. They were a trifle jaded now from their all-night march, and
their gaiters and uniforms were a little dusty; but the barrels of
their guns shone as bright as ever, and their spirits were good, after
their glorious exploit six miles back. Glorious, of course: yet a
trifle dull, all the same; there would be more fun shooting these
bumpkins, if only they could summon heart to put up a bit of a fight in
return. "Maybe we'll get a better chance at 'em out here, colonel--eh?"
the major of marines might have said, with his Scotch brogue, turning
his horse to ride beside his superior officer for a mile or so. "I
don't think it, sir," that great soldier would reply, puffing out his
cheeks, and wiping his brow with his embroidered handkerchief. "The
sight of his majesty's uniform, Major Pitcairn, is alone enough to put
to flight every scurvy rebel in Massachusetts. If you want to get
within range of 'em, sir, you must wear mufti."

During the early morning hours, the minute-men standing under the
liberty pole in front of Concord meeting-house had been gradually
re-enforced by parties hastening in from Lincoln, Acton, and other
outlying hamlets, until they numbered about two hundred men. But as the
British drew near, eight hundred strong, the Americans withdrew down a
meadow road northward, until they reached a hospitable edifice with a
broad roof, pierced by gables, standing at the upper end of an avenue,
and with its back toward the sluggish Muskataquid, or Concord River. A
few rods to the left of the site of this manse was a wooden bridge,
spanning the stream, known as the North Bridge. The manse was occupied
by the Reverend William Emerson, the minister of the town, and from its
western windows was an excellent view of the bridge. One of these
windows was open, and the pastor himself, with his arms resting on the
sill, was looking from this coign of vantage when the minute-men came
up, crossed the bridge, and stationed themselves on the rising ground
just beyond. He remained there, a deeply interested spectator, during
the events which followed.

The British, finding Concord deserted, divided into three parts, one
going to a bridge to the south of the town, one remaining in the town
itself, and the third marching north, where it again divided, one party
of a hundred guarding the approach to the north bridge, on the further
side of which the Americans were embattled, the other proceeding along
the road to the house of Captain Barrett in search of arms. A couple of
hours passed by, and nothing seemed likely to happen; but it was
noticed that there was the smoke of a fire in Concord, a mile to the
south and east. Smith and Pitcairn were there, with the main body of
the troops, and they had been making bonfires of the liberty pole and
some gun carriages: the court house was also in a blaze. But to the
Concord men, waiting at the bridge, it looked as if the British were
setting their homes afire. The women and children had been sent into
the woods out of harm's way, before the regiments arrived; but some of
them might have ventured back again. Vague rumors of the bloodshed at
Lexington had been passed from mouth to mouth, losing nothing,
probably, on the way. The men began to ask one another whether it was
not incumbent on them to march to the rescue of their town?

By accessions from Carlisle, Bedford, Woburn, Westford, Littleton and
Chelmsford they had now grown to a strength of four hundred; the force
immediately opposing them was less than half as numerous. They
evidently did not expect an attack; they had not even removed the
planks from the bridge. They despised the Yankees too much to take that
easy precaution.

But though the British at this point were few, they were regulars; they
stood for the English army in America: and for more than that--they
stood for all England, for Parliament, for the king, for loyalty; for
that enormous moral force, so much more potent even than the physical,
which tends to prevail because it always has prevailed. These farmers
did not fear to risk their lives; their fathers, and some of
themselves, had fought Indians and Frenchmen, and thought little of it.
But to fight men whose limbs were made in England--in the old home
which the colonists still regarded as theirs, and had not ceased to
love and honor, for all this quarrel about duties and laws of
trade--that was another matter: it was almost like turning their
weapons against themselves. And yet, if there were any value in human
liberty, if the words which they had listened to from the lips of Adams
and Warren and Hancock meant anything--now was the time to testify to
their belief in them. They were men: this was their land: yonder were
burning their dwellings: they had a right to defend them, and their
families. What said Captain Barrett--and Isaac Davis of Acton, and
Buttrick? And here was Colonel Robinson of Westford too, a volunteer
to-day: but what was his opinion?

The officers drew together, conferred a moment, and then Barrett, who
was in command, and the only man on horseback, gave the word: "Advance
across the bridge: don't fire unless they fire at you." The companies
marched past him, led by Buttrick, Davis and Robinson, with their
swords drawn. The men were in double file.

Seeing them actually advancing on the bridge, the British condescended
to bestir themselves, and some of them began to raise the planks. Upon
this, the Americans, who meant to cross, broke into a trot. Mr.
Emerson, leaning out of his window, with the light of battle in his
eyes, saw three or four puffs of smoke come from the British, and two
Americans fell. Immediately after there was a volley from the regulars,
and now Isaac Davis was down, and moved no more; and Abner Hosmer fell
dead near him. The Americans were advancing, but they had not fired.
"Father in Heaven!" ejaculated the good parson, between his set teeth,
"aren't they going to shoot?"

Even as he spoke, he saw Buttrick leap upward, and heard his shout:
"Fire, fellow soldiers!--for God's sake, fire!"

The men repeated the word to one another; up came their guns to their
shoulders, and the sharp detonations followed.

They reached the ears of the minister, and he gave a sigh of relief.
They echoed across the river, and rolled away toward the village, and
into the distance. Nor did they stop there--those echoes: the Atlantic
is wide, but they crossed it; they made Lord North, Thurlow, and
Wedderburn start in their chairs, and mutter a curse: they penetrated
to the king in his cabinet, and he flushed and bit his lip. More than a
hundred years have passed; and yet the vibrations of that shot across
Concord Bridge have not died away. Whenever tyranny and oppression
raise their evil hands, that sound comes reverberating out of the past,
and they hesitate and turn pale. Whenever a monarch meditates injustice
against his subjects, the noise of the muskets of the Concord yeomen,
fired that men might be free, falls upon his ear, and he pauses and
counts the cost. Yes, and there have been those among ourselves,
citizens of the land for which those yeomen fought and died, who also
might take warning from those ominous echoes: for the battle waged by
selfishness and corruption against human rights has not ceased to be
waged on these shores, though the British left them a century ago. It
seems, at times, as if victory inclined toward the evil rather than the
good. But let us not be misled. The blood of the farmers who drove
England out of America flows in our veins still; we are patient and
tolerant to a fault, but not forever. The onlooker, gazing from afar,
fears that we will never shoot; but presently he shall be reassured;
and once our advance is begun, there will be no relenting till the last
invader be driven into the sea.

There is a deeper lesson yet to be learned from Concord fight. It is
that the noblest deeds may be done by the humblest instruments; and
that as Christ chose His apostles from among the fishermen of Galilee,
so was the immortal honor of beginning the battle for the liberation of
mankind intrusted to a handful of lowly husbandmen and artisans, who
knew little more than that right was right, and wrong, wrong. There
were no philosophers or statesmen among them; they comprehended nothing
of diplomacy; they only felt that a duty had been laid upon them, and
inspired by that conviction, they went forward and did it. The judgment
of the world has ratified their act, and has admitted that perhaps more
subtle reasoners than they, balancing one consideration against
another, taking counsel of far-reaching prudence, flinching from
responsibility, might have put off action until the golden moment had
forever passed. But what the hands of these men found to do, they did
with their might; and therefore established the truth that the spirit
of God finds its fitting home in the bosoms of the poor and simple; and
that the destinies of mankind are safe in their protection.

Two English soldiers were killed or mortally wounded by the fire of the
Americans and several others were hit. A panic seized upon the rest,
and before the farmers had crossed the bridge, they were retreating in
disorder upon the main body in Concord. Barrett's men were surprised by
this sudden collapse of the enemy, and did not pursue them at that
time, nor intercept the small force further up the road, all of whom
might easily have been killed or captured. Perhaps they even felt sorry
for what they had done; at all events, they betrayed no
bloodthirstiness as yet. But when Smith and Pitcairn, after much
agitation and irresolution, ordered a retreat of the whole force down
the Boston road, firing as they went upon all who showed themselves,
and robbing and destroying dwellings along the route: when the winners
of Concord bridge, and their fellow minute-men, who now began to be
numbered by thousands rather than by hundreds, saw and comprehended
this, the true spirit of war was kindled within them, and they began
that running fight of twenty miles which ended in the hurling of the
British into the defenses of Boston, broken, exhausted, utterly
demoralized and beaten, with a loss of two hundred and seventy-three
men and officers, Smith himself receiving a severe wound. Ten miles
more would have witnessed their complete annihilation. No troops ever
ran with better diligence than did these English regulars before the
despised Yankee minute-men; they lost the day, and honor likewise. It
was in vain that they threw out flanking parties, in an effort to clear
the woods of the American sharpshooters; the latter knew the war of the
forest better than they, and the flanking parties withered away, and
staggered helpless from exhaustion. It was in vain that Lord Percy,
with twelve hundred men, met the flying horde at Lexington, where their
officers were trying to reform them under threats of death; his cannon
could delay, but not reverse the fortunes of the day. Lord Percy soon
became as frightened as the rest, and realized that speed of foot was
his sole hope of safety. Gasping for breath, reeling from fatigue, with
terror and despair in their hearts, foul with dust and dripping with
blood, a third part of the British army in New England were hunted back
to their fortifications as the sun of the 19th of April, whose first
beams had fallen upon the dead at Lexington, went down in the west.
Less than fifty Americans had been killed, less than forty were
wounded. Some of these, however, were helpless persons, who were
wantonly murdered in their houses by English soldiers, their brains
dashed out, and their bodies hacked and stabbed. Women in childbirth
were not exempt from the brutal fury of the flower of the British army;
and an idiot boy was deliberately shot as he sat on a fence, vacantly
staring at the passing rout. All, or most of the towns in the
neighborhood of Boston contributed their able-bodied men to the
American force during the day; but there was never more than a few
hundred together at one time, fresh relays taking the place of those
whose ammunition had been used up. Some of these squads performed
prodigies of endurance; one of them arrived at the scene of action
after a march of fifty-five miles. No man under seventy or over sixteen
would stay at home; and Josiah Haynes of Sudbury was marching and
fighting from earliest dawn till past noon, when he was killed by a
grenadier's musket-ball. He was born five years before the Eighteenth
Century began.

At West Cambridge the Americans were met by Joseph Warren and General
Heath, who organized the heretofore irregular pursuit, and made it more
disastrous to the enemy than ever. Warren, in the front of danger, was
grazed by a bullet; but his time had not yet come. Fortunately for the
British, Charlestown Neck was near, and once across that they were for
the present safe. In fourteen hours they had learned more about America
than they could ever forget. The Americans, for their part, had not
failed to gather profit and confidence from the experiences of the day.
The paralysis of respect and loyalty to England was at an end. The
antagonists had met and measured their strength, and the undisciplined
countrymen had proved the stronger. At any given point of the retreat,
the English had always been the more numerous; but they showed neither
heart nor ability for the contest. The British Coffee House in King
Street that night presented a scene in marked contrast with that of the
night before.

The rumors of the battle, and messages of information and appeal from
the leaders, were disseminated without delay, and in a space of time
wonderfully short had penetrated to the remotest of the colonies.
Everywhere they met with the same reception; all were eager to join in
the work so hopefully begun. Within a day or two, the force
beleaguering Boston numbered several thousand; but as many of these
came and went between the camp and their homes, no precise estimate can
be made. They were without artillery for bombardment, without a
commissariat, and almost without organization; and no leader had yet
appeared capable of bringing order out of the confusion. But not a few
men afterward to be distinguished were present there: the veteran John
Stark, Benedict Arnold from Connecticut, Israel Putnam, who rode a
hundred miles on one horse to join the provincial army; and Joseph
Warren, were on the ground, and others were to come. Boston was
effectually surrounded; Gage and his officers were afraid to order a
sortie; and after a few days allowed the non-loyalist inhabitants to
leave the city, on their promise not to take part in the siege. The
chief deficiency of the Americans, or that at least which most
obviously pressed upon them, was the want of money: Massachusetts had
hitherto avoided paper; but it was no longer possible to stand on
scruples, and a bill to issue a hundred thousand pounds was passed, and
a quarter as much in bills of small denominations, to pay the soldiers.
The other colonies adopted similar measures. In New York, eighty
thousand pounds' worth of stores and supplies for Gage was seized by
the people, and no ships were allowed to leave the harbor for the
succor of the enemy. In Virginia, Patrick Henry and the young Madison,
just out of Princeton, were prominent in opposing Governor Dunmore's
efforts to establish "order." In Pennsylvania, men were raised and
drilled, and patriotic resolves adopted; and Franklin arrived from
England in time to be elected deputy to the second American Congress.
The men of South Carolina announced themselves ready to give "the half,
or the whole" of their estates for the security of their liberties, and
voted to raise three regiments. Georgia, with only three thousand
militia, and under threat of an Indian war on her frontier, fearlessly
gave in her adhesion to the general movement. In North Carolina, the
news from Lexington stampeded the governor, and left the people free to
work their will. But the next notable achievement, after the Concord
fight and the running battle, was the capture of Ticonderoga by Ethan
Allen.

The design was formed in Connecticut, less than ten days after
Lexington. Ethan Allen was a Connecticut boy; but had early emigrated
with his brothers to the New Hampshire Grants, as Vermont was then
called. These grants, given by the governor of New Hampshire, were
called in question by New York, and officers from that colony tried to
oust the settlers; in their resistance, Allen was the leader, and
attained local celebrity. Parsons of Connecticut conferred with
Benedict Arnold on the scheme of capturing the old fortress; and
communication was had with Allen, who, being familiar with the Lake
George region, and at the same time of Connecticut stock, was esteemed
the best man to associate with the enterprise. Parsons and a few others
raised money on their personal security, and set out for the north,
gathering companions as they went. Ethan Allen met them at Bennington,
with his company of Green Mountain Boys, and was chosen leader of the
adventure, Arnold, who had a commission from Massachusetts, being
ignored. On the 9th of May, the party, numbering about eighty men,
exclusive of the rear guard, which was left behind by the exigencies of
the occasion, landed on the shore near the fortress. Ticonderoga was a
strong place, even for a force provided with cannon; but Allen had
nothing but muskets, and everything depended upon a surprise. It was
just sunrise on the 10th when Allen addressed his men with "We must
this morning either quit our pretensions to valor, or possess ourselves
of this fortress; and inasmuch as it is a desperate attempt, I do not
urge it, contrary to your will. You that will undertake voluntarily,
poise your firelocks!" The response was unanimous. The wicket of the
stronghold was found open; the sentry snapped his gun at Allen, missed
him, and was overpowered with a rush, together with the other guards.
On the parade within, a hollow square was formed, facing the four
barracks; a wounded sentry volunteered to conduct Allen to the
commander, Delaplace. "Come forth instantly, or I will sacrifice the
whole garrison," thundered Allen, at the door; and poor Delaplace, half
awake, started up with his breeches in his hand and wanted to know what
was the matter.--"Deliver to me this fort instantly!"--"By what
authority?" inquired the stupefied commander. The Vermonter was never
at a loss either for a word or a blow.--"In the name of the great
Jehovah, and the Continental Congress!" and presenting the point of his
sword, he cut short further parley and received the surrender. Fifty
prisoners, with guns and stores, went with the fortress, for which the
British had sacrificed forty million dollars and several campaigns; and
not a drop of American blood was spilled. Ethan Allen is a picturesque
character, and the capture of Ticonderoga is one of the picturesque
episodes of the Revolutionary War, and a valuable exploit from the
military point of view; but it lacks inevitably the moral weight and
dignity of the Concord fight. Indeed, the significance of the entire
struggle between Britain and her colonies was summed up and typified in
that initial act of unsupported courage. What followed was but a
corollary and expansion of it.

On the same day that Allen overcame Delaplace, the second Congress met
in Philadelphia. It was a very conservative body, anxious that the war
might proceed no further, and hopeful that England might recognize the
justice of America's wish to be free while retaining the name of
subjects of the king. But affairs had now got beyond the control of
congresses; the people themselves were in command, and the legislature
could do little more than ascertain and register their will. The
present Congress, indeed, had no legislative powers, nor legal status
of any kind; it was but the sober mind of the several colonies thinking
over the situation, and offering advice here, warning there. It could
not dispose of means to execute its ideas, while yet it would be open
to as much criticism as if it possessed active powers. Naturally,
therefore, its tendency was to be timid and circumspect. It is
memorable nevertheless for at least two resolutions of high importance;
it voted an army of twenty thousand men, and it named George Washington
as commander-in-chief. And when he declined to countenance the
proffered petition to King George, the ultimate prospect of
reconciliation with England vanished.